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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Chap. Co pyri ght No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



THE 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS 



OF THE 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 



EXPLAINED AND DISCUSSED 



FOR 



PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS 



BY 

FRANK HUGH FOSTER 

« » 

PH.D. (LEIPZIG), HON. D. D. (CHICAGO THEO. SEM.) 

Professor of Theology in Pacific Theological Seminary (Congre- 
gational), Oakland, Cal. 



^ 



PHILADELPHIA 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND 
SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 

1899 



Ths Lurart 
OP CwveRsss 



WASmNOTOM 






28548 



Copyright, 1898, by The Trustees of 

The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- 
School Work. 



^O COPIES REC 



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rED-61899 



>vv 






PREFACE 



The following work is the outgrowth of many 
years of study and teaching. The writer's interest in 
the subject began in youth. During his residence in 
Germany he formed the purpose of preparing a manual 
upon the controversy between the CathoHc and Protes- 
tant Churches, and at one time thought of translating 
Hase's Handbuch der protestantischen Poleinik gegen 
die roinisch-katholische Kirche, That work is a mar- 
vel of fullness, historical knowledge, accurate defini- 
tion, acuteness, and wit. But its size, its tone, and its 
general style, as well as the proportionate attention 
given to topics of greater interest in Germany than 
in America, led to an early abandonment of this 
idea. It has, however, been freely employed as a 
source of suggestion and material, and the ensuing 
work is constructed upon the general lines laid down 
by Hase (edition of 1878, the fourtli). An acquaint- 
ance with Mohler's Symbolik determined the introduc- 
tion of a new element into the discussion, the effort to 
present the Catholic " ideal '' of every important 
topic ; that is, to present each doctrine from the point 
of view and under the light which render it con- 
vincing and precious to the CathoHc. Under the 
guidance of this great and noble mind, the Catholic 
writers selected as the exponents of their system 

iii 



iv Preface, 

have been those who occupy the higher ranges of 
thought, and present their system in its more ideal 
aspects. It was a piece of great good fortune that, 
just as the more serious study was to begin, Hein- 
rich's Dogmatische Theologie^ a monumental work 
of the most comprehensive character, and of the 
finest spirit, began to issue from the press. This 
work, now extended to seven volumes, comprising 
nearly 6000 pages, has been the chief authority for 
the Catholic position upon the topics which it covers. 
It is greatly to be lamented that its author's death 
suspended its pubHcation in 1889, and that it must 
now be continued by another (though very able) 
hand. For a certain massiveness, positiveness, and 
cogency, and for its large infusion of the genuine 
German spirit of nobility and childlike simplicity, 
this work bears comparison with the very best in its 
department, whether Protestant or Catholic. The 
spirit, and even the forms of expression which Hein- 
rich employs, remind one forcibly of the great Leip- 
zig historian, Kahnis. Heinrich's treatise now 
stops with the atonement. Where he has failed, 
the Prcelectiones Theologicce of the Jesuit, John Per- 
rone, in the briefer edition (four volumes, Paris, A. 
Roger et F. Chernoviz, 1 894), has been employed, as 
representing more nearly than any other work the 
standard Roman theology of the present day. And 
from our own country, the little work of Cardinal 
Gibbons, entitled The Faith of our Fathers (reprint 
of 1890), a very succinct, clear, and able presentation 
of the Catholic system, which has had an enormous 
circulation, has received constant attention. For the 



Preface, v 

original authorities, the confessions and creeds, the 
Creeds of Christendom, by Prof. Philip Schaff, supple- 
mented by the Roman Catechism, has been gener- 
ally employed. The early Church fathers have 
been generally quoted after the English translation in 
the Libraries of the Christian Literature Co., though 
with constant reference to the original texts. Of 
Protestant controversialists, a MS. copy of lectures 
by Kahnis, the Lehrsystem der romischen Kirche by 
the early deceased and brilliant Johannes Delitzsch, 
son of Prof Franz Delitzsch, Littledale's Plain Reasons 
against foining the Church of Rome (edition of 1886), 
in addition to Hase, have given the most fruitful 
suggestions; but the main reliance has been upon 
the standard treatises of exegesis and theology, in 
which the fundamental considerations bearing upon 
this subject have been drawn out at length. 

In all this work it has been the constant purpose 
to set forth the Catholic doctrine fully and fairly 
from the authoritative sources, to present its ideal 
form, and to state the arguments for it in their full 
force and at as great length as the limits of this work 
permitted. It is hoped that no Catholic will be able 
to complain of misrepresentation or injustice. It has 
been the writer's desire to state the Catholic case as 
strongly and as well as a CathoHc could do it. But 
he has then attempted to refute what he beheved to 
be wrong with equal clearness and completeness. 
He has hit error as hard as he could. He believes 
that strenuous conflict will be appreciated by great- 
hearted souls. The antagonism between Catholic 
and Protestant is at bottom founded upon a difference 



vi Preface. 

in convictions, in ideas. Nothing but a thorough 
understanding between the parties, and nothing but 
a surrender by either party of what it may find to be 
wrong, will ever produce harmony or promote the 
triumph of the truth. It is for these reasons that 
the theme has been chosen, and in this spirit that 
the controversy has been waged in the present vol- 
ume. 

One limitation that may be unexpected to some 
the author has laid upon himself The numerous 
practical questions between Catholics and Protestants, 
for example, in this country, the question of the pub- 
he schools, have been left substantially untouched. 
They would have led the discussion too far, and 
would have been outside the theme chosen, which 
has to do with the fundamental ideas upon the oppo- 
sition of which all superficial opposition is based. 
Correct the fundamental disagreements, and the 
details of adjustment will be easy between the 
parties. 

To Catholics and Protestants alike, then, the author 
commends his effort, with the prayer for the divine 
blessing upon them both. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 
THE CHURCH. 



PAGE 

^ I. Agreement of the Protestant and Catholic systems. — J 2. 

Subject of this work I 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE CHURCH. 

2 3. Definition of the Church as visible. — § 4. Proof. Mohler's 
ideal proof. Biblical proof. — ^ 5. Reply. Circular reasoning. 
The true New Testament Church is composed of saints, and 
is invisible. — ^ 6. Depotentiation of the spiritual contact of 
the Christian with God.— | 7. Notes of the Church.— g 8. 
Apostolicity. — ^ 9. Relation of Peter to Rome. Not known 
that he was ever there. Not bishop. Not martyred there. — 
§ 10. Catholicity. Missions, Catholic and Protestant. — 
§ II. Holiness. Characters of the Reformers. — ^ 12. Unity, — 
I 13. Ideal of Church unity. — ^ 14. Rome does not pos- 
sess unity. The mother of schism. — § 15. Necessity of the 
unproved idea of the authority of Rome to all the fore- 
going argumentation 3 

CHAPTER H. 

THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 

§ 16. Division of the subject. — I. Definition OF the Infalli- 
bility OF THE Church. — g 17. Definition of Trent. — § 18. 
Heinrich's explanations. — § 19. Definition of ^^ ex cathe- 
dra^ cathedratic. — \ 20. Ideal. — 11. Dogmatic Proof 

vii 



viii Contents. 

PAGfi 

AND Reply. — \ 21. General arguments. — \ 22. The three 
main texts. — \ 23. Luke xxii. 32 and John xxi. 15-17. — 
\ 24. Matt. xvi. i8. — \ 25. Atmosphere of the Scriptures. — 
\ 26. Nature of Revelation. — \ 27. Logical requirements 
of an argument for infallibility. — \ 28. Duty of private 
judgment. — III. Historical Proof and Reply. — \ 29. 
Irenseus IIL iii. — \ 30. Heinrich's argument from the 
passage. — \ 31. Tertullian de Prescrip. xxxvi. — \ 32. Ar- 
gument. — \ 2)Z' Roman historical method. — \ 34. Argu- 
ment from Cyprian. Interpolations. — \ 35. Cyprian's real 
position. — \ 36. Doctrine of infallibility after the Council of 
Nice (325). — \ 37. The case of Honorius, sketch. — \ 38. 
The doctrine of Sergius' letter to Honorius. — \ 39. Honorius' 
reply. — \ 40. Was it a letter ^jr cathedra ? — \ 41. Conflicting 
Catholic interpretations of the Honorius episode. — \ 42. 
Summary. Protestant idea of Christian certainty .... 29 

CHAPTER III. 

THE NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 

g 43. Membership in the Roman Catholic Church essential to 
salvation. — \ 44. Proof that this is a doctrine of the Roman 
Church. — \ 45. Proof offered for the doctrine. — g 46. Apolo- 
getic modifications. — \ 47. " Invincible ignorance." — \ 48. 
Ambiguity and inconsistency of the Roman system ... 75 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE HIERARCHY. 

J 49. Connection of the ideas of a visible church and a hier- 
archy. — \ 50. Definition of the priesthood. Universal priest- 
hood of believers. — \ 5 1 . Proof, principally from the sacrifice. 
\ 52. Reply to the main argument. — \ 53. Protestant doc- 
trine of the priesthood. — \ 54. Criticism of the historical argu- 
ment. — \ 55. Extravagant expressions. — \ 56. The episco- 
pate. — \ 57. Nevi^ Testament bishops and presbyters equal. — = 
§ 58. Patristic argument. — \ 59. The celibacy of the clergy. 
Not in the New Testament. — \ 60. Ideal view of celibacy. 
Celibacy monastic and dangerous. — \ 61. Practical argu- 
ment. — \ 62. Protestant ideal of the pastorate. — \ 63. In- 
consistencies ^^ 



Contents, ix 

. CHAPTER V. 

THE PAPACY. ^ 

PAGE 

\ 64. Division of the theme. — \ 65. Vatican definitions of papal 
supremacy. — \ 66. Development of the present and curial 
system of the Church. — \ 67. The Gallican theory incon- 
sistent and impracticable. — \ 68. The Gallican theory yields 
to the curial. — \ 69. Elements of the curial system. — \ 70. 
Cardinal Gibbons' argument for the supremacy of the pope. — 
§ 71. Historical view of the development of the papacy. — 
\ 72. The papacy and the State. — \ 73. Necessity of the 
temporal power. — § 74. Dependence of the State upon the 
Church. Bull Uttam Sanctam. — \ 75. The Roman Church 
and toleration. — § 76. The public schools 113 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY WITHIN THE CHURCH. 

§ 77. What authority does Rome acknowledge binding upon her-' 
self? — \ 78. Scripture and tradition. — \ 79. The ideal view 
of tradition. — \ 80. The Protestant reply. — \ 81. The Catho- 
lic doctrine of the Scriptures. — \ 82. Heinrich's attack on 
the Protestant doctrine of the Scriptures. Witness of the 
Spirit. — \ ^2i' Need of an Interpreter. Perspicuity. — 
\ 84. Roman view of the Vulgate. Popular use of the 
Bible. — \ 85. Cardinal Gibbons on the Church and the Bible 148 



PART II. 



THE SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES PERTAINING TO 
SALVATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

JUSTIFICATION, FAITH, AND WORKS. 

86. Definitions of the Council of Trent. — \ 87. Mohler's discus- 
sion of original righteousness and original sin. — \ 88. Mohler's 
description of justification. — \ 89. Criticism. — \ 90. Protes- 
tant view of saving faith. — \ 91. Good works. Purgatory. 



Contents, 

PAGE 

\ 92. Protestant view of their relations to justification. 
Purgatory. — \ 93. Externality of the Catholic view, and 
consequent depotentiation of Christianity. — \ 94. Resump- 
tion and completion of the proof that salvation is not con- 
fined to the Roman Church 169 



CHAPTER II. 

OUTGROWTHS OF THE DOCTRINE OF MERIT. 

J 95. Supererogatory works. — \ 96. Scriptural proof. — \ 97. Ideal 
view and Protestant reply. — \ 98. Monasticism. Its history. 
The Jesuits. — \ 99. Protestant objections. — \ 100. Worship 
of the saints.^ — \ loi. Catholic ideal. — \ 102. The real ques- 
tion. — § 103. Protestant answer. — \ 104. Canonization . . 191 

CHAPTER III. 

THE VIRGIN MARY. 

\ 105. Recent development of this doctrine. — \ 106. The Council 
of Trent. — \ 107. The encyclical of Pope Pius IX. Five 
points ip the doctrine. — \ 108. Ideal aspects. — \ 109. The 
sinlessness of Mary. — \ no. Her immaculate conception. — 
§ III. Her perpetual virginity. — \ 112. Drift of Mariolatry. 
\ 113. Place of the authority of the Church in the argu- 
ment. — \ 1 14. History of the doctrine of the immaculate con- 
ception. — \ 115. Gutberlet's review of the history. — \ 116. 
The theory of development. — \ 117. Criteria of a true de- 
velopment 210 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE SACRAMENTS. 

§ 118. Definition of the sacraments in general. — \ 119. Meaning 
oi opus operatutn. — \ 1 20. Mohler's idealization of this con- 
ception. — \ 121. Requisites to the validity of the sacraments. 
\ 122. Two forms of "intention." — \ 123. Number. — 
\ 124. Ideal of the sacraments. — \ 125. Protestant objec- 
tions. To the number seven. — \ 1 26, To the opus operatum. — 
\ 127. Consequences of the doctrine of "intention" to the 
Roman system 237 



Contents. xi 

CHAPTER V. 

BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION. 

PAGE 

\ 128. Definition in respect to baptism. — \ 129. Dilemma of Cath- 
olics in consequence of the doctrine as to heretical baptism. 
\ 130. Protestant view of baptism. — \ 131. Confirmation . . 249 

■» 
CHAPTER VI. 

PENANCE. 

\ 132. Definitions. — \ 133. Ideal. — \ 134. Proof from Scripture. 
I 135. The judicial power of the priest not authenticated. — 
g 136. Proof continued. — \ 137. General objections. — 
§ 138. Historical proof. None rendered by the earliest writers. 
\ 139. " Attrition." — § 140. Artificial position into which 
the Church of Rome is brought. — \ 141. Satisfactions. In- 
consistent with the satisfaction of Christ. In actual practice 
artificial. — \ 142. Prayer no penance. — \ 143. Purgatory. — 
§ 144. Idealization. This renders it all the more unneces- 
sary and impossible. — § 145. Scripture proof. — \ 146. His- 
torical proof fails. The doctrine a " corruption." — \ 147. 
Accompanying scandals. — \ 148. Purgatory a "blessing," 
and yet to be avoided ! — \ 149. Indulgences. — \ 150. The 
theories underlying them. — \ 151. Indulgences imperil the 
whole doctrine of sacramental confession. — \ 1 5 2. The 
triviality of modern conditions for indulgence. — \ 153. 
Abuses of the confessional.— § 154. The true argument 
perpetuating the confessional in the Catholic Church. — 
g 155. The Inquisition 255 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

§ 156. Doctrine and religious feeling unite here. — \ 157. Defini- 
tions. — \ 158. Ideal. — I. The Real Presence.— § 159. The 
Catholic argument. John Sixth. — \ 160. Discussion of this 
chapter. — \ 161. The Lord's Supper not a fulfillment of a 
promise to give his body to be eaten. — \ 162. Gibbons' argu- 
ment from I Cor. x. 16 and xi. 23-29. — \ 163. The histori- 
cal argument. — | 164. Real attitude of the early Church to 
this doctrine. — \ 165. Transubstantiation. — \ 166. Insuper- 



xii Co7ttents. 

PAGE 

able difficulties of this theory. — J 167. True history of the 
theory of transubstantiation. — § 168. Transubstantiation 
unnecessary. — II. The Sacrifice of the Mass. — § 169. 
The Scripture argument for it invalid. — J ^1^- The Scrip- 
tures positively against the sacrifice. — ^ 171. The historical 
argument, — ^172. The denial of the cup to the laity. — § 173. 
The Protestant ideal of the Lord's Supper 293 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE REMAINING SACRAMENTS— ORDER, MATRIMONY, 
EXTREME UNCTION. 

g 174. Order. — J 175. Matrimony. — § 176. Divorce. — ? 177. Im- 
pediments to marriage. — § 178. Mixed marriages. — g 1 79. 
Extreme unction 338 

CHAPTER IX. 
CONCLUSION. 

g 180. Summary of the System. — § 181. Critique of its Proof. — 
I 182. Effects of Method on the System.— ^ 183. The Protes- 
tant System. — J 184.. Fundamental Protestant Objection to 
Catholicism 349 



INDEX 357 



PART I. 

THE CHURCH. 

§ I. Although the Roman system of doctrine, 
upon the exposition of which we now enter, differs 
very widely from Protestantism in much of its super- 
structure, it rests upon the same foundation with this. 
Most Protestants accept without difficulty the results 
arrived at in the first six general councils of the 
Church, though they do not ascribe to councils that 
authoritative place which these receive in the Roman 
system, nor believe that, as authoritative bodies, they 
had any great influence upon the development of 
Christian doctrine. They are rather landmarks of 
progress. The Apostles' Creed, which the Council 
of Trent rehearses as the fundamental creed of Chris- 
tendom, is repeated to-day in almost every Protestant 
church. The definitions of Nice upon the Trinity, 
and of Chalcedon upon the person of Christ form 
the basis of the theology of every great Protestant 
communion. In the whole of natural theology 
Catholics and Protestants teach, in general, the same 
doctrines, and employ many of the same hnes of 
argumentation and proof The personality of God 
in distinction from every pantheistic idea, the creation 
of matter, the providential control of nature by God, 
the possibility and the actuality of miracles, the 
reality of revelation, the nature of the soul of man, 
the great principles of morality and of natural con- 

1 



2 The Roman System. 

science, are viewed alike by both systems. And the 
Protestant may also gladly acknowledge, however 
he may deem the great saving truths of Christianity 
to be obscured by the additions of Catholicism, that 
the Roman Church has always held up the Lord 
Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of men, and has 
directed the faith of the inquirer to him. 

§ 2. With these fundamental doctrines, in which 
the two churches agree, we have nothing to do 
here. The object of the present work is to set 
forth the system of the Roman Church w^here it 
differs from Protestanism. Yet not every difference 
can be noticed in such a work as this. Minor dis- 
agreements will be generally passed over in silence. 
Larger ones will be treated with strict reference to 
their relation to the system as a whole. The ques- 
tions raised for answer here are these : What is the 
system of the Church of Rome in its essential and 
distinguishing features ? How are these sustained in 
the eyes of its adherents themselves ? and, What are 
the merits of that system as a distinctive system ? The 
key to the answers to these questions is to be found in 
the doctrine of Rome as to the Church, from which 
every other peculiarity of the system flows, and hence 
to this topic attention must first be directed. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE CHURCH. 

§ 3. Definition of the Church. With this the 
very central point of the difiference between the Roman 
and Protestant systems is touched. ''AH heresy," 
says Arnold in his Catholic Dictionary} " involves a 
rejection of the Church's authority; and, on the 
other hand, it is impossible to accept the true doc- 
trine concerning the Church and at the same time be 
a heretic ... It is misunderstood by Protestants 
more utterly than by most at least of their predeces- 
sors in separation, and the true sense of the ninth 
article in the Apostles' Creed is the hinge on which 
all our controversy with Protestants turns." The 
importance of exact definition, and of a full compre- 
hension of the meaning of such definition, as it lies 
in the mind of the earnest and schooled Catholic, 
cannot, therefore, be easily overestimated. 

And yet, strange as it may seem, the great sym- 
bols of the Church nowhere contain a concise and 
authoritative definition of the Church. For the best 
one we are indebted to Bellarmine, Avho is followed 
in substance by Cardinal Gibbons.^ He says : '* The 
one and true Church is the congregation of men 
united by the profession of the same Christian faith 
and the communion of the same sacraments, under 

1 Article, " Church of Christ." 2 paith of our Fathers, p. 23. 

3 



4 The Ro7nan System. 

the rule of the legitimate pastors and especially the 
one vicar of Christ upon earth." ^ What makes the 
Church is the profession, the communion, the rule, 
especially the submission to the papacy. This is all 
external, and at once identifies the Church with the 
visible Church. The same thought is brought out 
with the greatest distinctness in other definitions, 
such as Mohler's : ** The visible communion of all 
believers, founded by Christ."^ Perrone puts it: 
*'The Church, or the society instituted by Christ, 
must necessarily be one, visible^ and perpetual."^ 
By this is not meant, as Protestants might acknowl- 
edge, that the Church of Christ has a visible organi- 
zation, but that the visible organization is the 
Church, and hence all that is said in Scripture of the 
Church applies to the visible Church as such. True, 
there are both good men- and bad in the Church, and 
the Roman Catechism distinguishes between them as 
" dissimilar in life and morals," the good being those 
" who are united not only by the profession of the 
faith, but also by the spirit of grace and the bond 
of charity." But, the catechism goes on to say, 
since one can never know who are truly pious, *' one 
may not think that Christ our Saviour spake of the 
invisible Church when he referred us to the Church 
and commanded that we should obey her, for, since 
this is unknown, who could be certain to whose de- 
cision he was to turn and whose authority obey ? 
The Church therefore embraces both the good and 
the bad, as the holy Scriptures and the writings of 

* Hase, Polc/nik, p. i, from Eccl. mil. c. 2. 

2 Symbolik, i., p. 331. 3 Prcelectiones , vol. i., p. 137, 



Visibility, 5 

holy men testify. Of this external Church it is that 
the Apostle writes, ' One body and one spirit/ " ^ 

What is then to be taught by Rome as to the 
Church will be taught of the visible Church. To 
this will be applied the various '' notes " of the 
Church, to this applied the offices and authority 
given to the Church in Scripture, and the privileges 
she possesses. And this visible Church is the church 
in communion with Rome. 

§ 4. Proof. This, as conducted by Heinrich, is 
as follows : ^ Christ did not merely come into the 
world to teach certain doctrines which he should 
then leave to operate as they might, invisibly and 
directly upon the minds of men, without intermedi- 
aries or agents, but he founded a visible church. . He 
certainly established a Messianic kingdom which 
should have no end. True, this kingdom has its 
invisible side, since its connection with Christ and his 
presence in it by his Spirit are invisible, as well as its 
spiritual graces, and is thus an object of faith ; but it 
is itself visible — /. e., knowable. This is evident {a) 
from necessity. The nature of man, as a being not 
only spiritual but also corporeal, demands that his 
religious activity should be not only internal, but also 
external, in a society, as all his life — birth, education, 
and general activity — is lived under the constant ope- 
ration of his fellow-men upon him in society. And 
therefore Christ has established such a society for 
him in the Church. In Judaism the family and the 

^ Catechismus Ro7nanus, Pars /., cap. x., qtic^st. vi. The edition 
employed is the Latin-German of Buse, Leipzig, Velhagen und Klas- 
ing, 1867. 2 Dog, Theol., i., p. 467. 



6 The Roman System, 

people were not only these, but also, and chiefly, a 
church. For Christianity, then, a visible church, as 
a spiritual kingdom of Christ embracing the entire 
race, existed from the beginning, and was in the 
highest degree appropriate. Then, again, the nature 
of revealed religion demands a visible church. Rev- 
elation is in its essence the exhibition of the invisible 
truth and grace of God in visible form. The incar- 
nation is a necessity to this revelation, and the visible 
Church, as the body of Christ, is equally necessary. 
The incarnation gives an authoritative truth, and the 
visible Church a pillar and ground and administrator 
of that truth. Then (b) it is a fact that Christ estab- 
lished a visible church. Its origin is known, and it 
has maintained an unbroken continuity from the first. 
Mohler says in his eloquent way : '' We see now 
that the Church, though composed of men, is not 
merely human. Rather, as in Christ the divine and 
human are to be distinguished although both are 
in perfect union, so he is also perpetuated in undi- 
vided entirety in the Church. The Church, his per- 
manent manifestation, is at the same time divine and 
human ; it is the unity of both. He it is who, con- 
cealed in earthly and human forms, works within it ; 
it has therefore a divine and a human side in such a 
way that the divine cannot be separated from the 
human, nor the human from the divine. These two 
sides therefore interchange their predicates : if it is 
the divine, the living Christ and his Spirit, which is 
the properly infallible, the eternally inerrant element 
in it, yet the human is also infallible and inerrant, 
because the divine without the human does not exist, 



Visibility. 7 

so far as we are concerned, at all ; the human is what 
it is not in itself, but as the organ and manifestation 
of the divine. And hence we perceive how so great, 
important, and significant a thing could be intrusted 
to men.'' ^ 

Other writers do not add substantially to this 
argument, except that they often emphasize the 
necessity of the visibility of the Church if it is to be 
an authority in matters of faith. " There would be 
no meaning," says the Catholic Dictionary^ "in the 
admonition to ' hear the Church,' if she were invisible. 
We could not accept her as our infallible guide, as 
the unfailing oracle of truth, if she consisted only 
of pious people, who are known and can be known 
as such to God alone." The Church comes first 
with instruction and the means of grace ; then the 
soul, thus instructed, becomes a member of the house- 
hold of God by incorporation in the visible Church. 
The same authority gives in a condensed form the 
bibHcal argument: *'The Church which they [the 
apostles] recognized was, first of all, a visible body. 
No other kind of church would have answered to 
the intention of Christ in founding it. His disciples 
were to be like ' a city that is set upon a mountain * 
(Matt. V. 14) 'a candle put upon a candlestick' {ib., 
V. 15). Christ's Church was not to consist merely in 
the invisible union of pious behevers in him. Far 
from this, in a series of parables our Lord warns his fol- 
lowers that the kingdom of heaven — i. e., the Church 
which he was to establish (since none but the good 
can enter heaven in the literal sense) — was to consist 

^ op. cit., vol. i., p. 333. 2 Art., " Church of Christ." 



8 The Roman System, 

of good and bad. He compares his Church to a 
field in which good grain and weeds grow together 
till the day of judgment; to a net which takes good 
and bad fish ; to a wedding feast where not all 
the guests are clothed in the wedding garment of 
charity ; to virgins, some of whom are wise, some 
foolish." 

§ 5. Reply. Protestants have no objection to 
make to the statement that Christ established a vis- 
ible church upon earth, and if the Roman doctrine 
meant no more than this, nothing further need be 
said. There is a visible church. It might indeed 
seem as if this were all that the Roman system main- 
tained, since the arguments sketched above prove 
nothing more than that there is a visible church, till 
an element is introduced, as in the Catholic Diction- 
ary, which trenches upon the next topic of discus- 
sion, viz., the authority of the Church. *' We could 
not accept her as our infallible guide, ... if she con- 
sisted only of pious people," the Dictionary says. Thus, 
authority in matters of faith, the unbroken continuity 
of the Church, and its identity with the Roman Clmrcli 
and its hierarchy, must all be proved before it is evi- 
dent that the visible Church is identical, without quali- 
fication, with the Church that Christ founded. While, 
therefore, the Roman system demands the identifica- 
tion of the Church with the visible Church, which is 
its first and fundamental error in the opinion of Prot- 
estants, in order to maintain its further doctrines of 
the authority of the Church, etc., it cannot prove this 
ultimate position without employing the subsequent 
doctrines which are built upon it as elements of the 



Visibility, 9 

proof. The proof thus fails at the outset, for this is 
reasoning in a circle. 

Nor is the biblical proof more successful. It can- 
not be doubted that there are in the visible Church 
both good men and bad, but are there such in that 
Church which the New Testament Scriptures have 
in mind when they speak of the true Church of 
Christ ? No ! That Church is the congregation of 
believers, and believers are they who have taken Jesus 
Christ as their Lord and are in vital and gracious rela- 
tions with him, not those merely who give an intellec- 
tual consent to certain truths or associate themselves in 
an outward way with Christians. They are the *'two 
or three gathered together in his name " in whose midst 
Jesus is (Matt, xviii. 20). The word of Peter in Acts 
ii. 38 was, "Repent;" and they ''that received his 
word were baptized : and there were added in that 
day about three thousand souls." It was " believe," 
— that is, change your minds, repent, forsake in heart 
and life your sin — which constituted the first and 
fundamental demand made upon men, and only when 
this was professedly complied with could there fol- 
low union with the Church, which was thus essenti- 
ally the fellowship of believers. When Paul wrote to 
the Church at Colossse (Col. i. 2), he called them " saints 
and faithful brethren." The Church is the "glorious 
Church," which is " without spot or wrinkle," and 
members of it are members of the body of Christ 
(Eph. V. 27, 30), none of which things can be said of 
the bad. All wicked men who may be in the visible 
Church are there improperly (i Cor. v. i, 9), and are 
to be cast out (Matt, xviii. 17; i Cor. v. 13). There 



lo The Roman System, 

was a Judas in the apostolic college, but he was not 
permitted to remain to hear the last discourse of his 
Lord. Hence, though the external and visible 
Church is in a sense the kingdom of Christ, it is this 
not in the sense that it is identified with that king- 
dom. It ever remains true that '' the kingdom of 
God cometh not with observation ; neither shall they 
say, Lo, here ! or, Tlicre f — which is precisely what the 
Catlwlic Dictionaiy says they must be able to say, in 
order that the Church should have and exercise 
authority — ''for lo, the kingdom of God is within 
yon'' (Luke xvii. 20, 21).^ 

§ 6. The Catholic, when he identifies the visible 
with the real Church, is in danger of depreciating 
that spiritual contact which the Christian gains with 
Christ through his Spirit without the intervention 
of the Church. Father Hecker demanded the medi- 
ation of the Church because Christ was otherwise 
present only in '' a dead book, or in an indefinite and 
abstract manner," ^ forgetting, apparently, that '' as 
many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the 
sons of God," and that Christ is " in " us by that 
Spirit (Rom. viii. 10, 14). We shall see, as we pro- 
ceed, many instances of the tendency produced by 
this initial position of Romanism to depotentiate the 
spiritual truths of Christianity. 

Thus the Roman position appears to be an error 
from the beginning; but the full refutation of even 

1 Greek, '"Ei/rbg vfxiiv." The other rendering, " among you," I re- 
ject as less consonant with the context. Either rendering is, however, 
entirely irreconcilable with the position of the Catholic Dictionary. 

2 Questions of the Soul, p. no. 



Apostolicity. 1 1 

this first error cannot be seen till it is found reen- 
forced in the refutation of the associated ideas as to 
the Church which form a part of the proof of the 
identity of the visible and the real Church. 

§ 7. The Notes or Attributes of the Church. 
The Church, since it is, according to Roman ideas, 
a visible church, must be capable of being recog- 
nized. The means of recognizing it are its " notes." 
These are mentioned in the Apostles' Creed, in which 
we profess, in the Roman rendering, to " believe one 
holy, cathoHc, and apostoHc Church." The Greek 
text of this creed reads : " I believe in one holy . . . 
Church," by which is emphasized the Church as an 
object of faith, and so invisible. But the Roman 
form has dropped the preposition. These then are 
the ''notes" of the Church, that it is one, holy, cath- 
olic, and apostoHc. 

§ 8. Upon the apostolicity of the Roman Church 
we need not Hnger long. It signifies that the Church 
was planted by the apostles and derived its doc- 
trines from them.^ Cardinal Gibbons argues in its 
support on the two lines thus suggested. '' The 
Catholic Church," he says, " alone teaches doctrines 
which are in all respects identical with those of the 
first teachers of the gospel." ^ If this statement is 
entirely incorrect, and if it shall eventually be found 
that the distinctively papal system departs from 
the doctrines of the apostles at every decisive and 
essential point, this argument for Roman apostolicity 
will be judged to fail. Such will, we believe, appear 
to be the case in the course of the following pages, 

1 Cat. Rom., i., x., xix. 2 p p^^ p_ 60. 



1^ The Roman System. 

which will discuss these doctrines with special refer- 
ence to their conformity to the New Testament. It 
is therefore unnecessary to say more upon this point 
at present. The Cardinal maintains also that the 
succession of the Roman bishops can be traced back 
without break to Peter himself, the first bishop of Rome. 
Now, that the Church of Rome was founded by the 
apostles, no Protestant questions. If some obscurer 
Christian may have first preached the gospel there, 
certainly Paul resided there and proclaimed the truth 
from his prison, and from his " own hired dwelling." 
There would be little occasion to question that Peter 
had once sojourned in Rome, had not the Church of 
Rome attached so weighty consequences to it. As 
it is, the alleged connection of the Church of Rome 
with the particular apostle Peter requires some ex- 
amination. 

§ 9. The Vatican Council declares that " the holy 
and blessed Peter . . . lives, presides, and judges, 
to this day and always, in his successors the bishops 
of the Holy See of Rome, which was founded by 
him, and consecrated by his blood." Three facts are 
thus asserted in reference to Peter: (i) That he 
founded the Roman Church ; (2) that he was its first 
bishop ; (3) that he was martyred at Rome. 

(i) There is no certain evidence that Peter was 
ever at Rome. The only biblical evidence alleged is 
that he dates his First Epistle from — Babylon (v. 1 3) ! 
Why should he not be believed ? Why say that this 
is a mystical name for Rome? However natural 
the use of Babylon for Rome may be in a book of 
the style of The Revelation, it is not natural in the 



Was Peter at Rome? 13 

date of a plain letter. Perrone^ argues at some 
length for this interpretation, and says that "the 
most ancient historians warrant it — Papias, Clement 
of Alexandria, Eusebius, and almost all others."^ 
The authority of these three for it is derived from a 
single citation from Eusebius, ii. 15, in which that 
historian, after describing Peter's preaching at Rome, 
relates how Mark was led to write his Gospel there 
to perpetuate Peter's preaching, confirming himself 
by citing Clement and Papias. But when he later 
(iii. 39) comes himself to quote Papias, that writer only 
says, '' Mark, having become the interpreter of 
Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in 
order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said 
or done by Christ." Not a hint is given by these 
words that Peter was ever in Romic. Had we the 
lost book of Clement which Eusebius cites, we 
should probably find it equally empty. Thus all of 
Perrone's citations reduce to the single authority of 
Eusebius, who wrote about A. d. 324, and who thus 
could know nothing of the matter of himself 

When we come to the positive historical evidence 
that Peter was ever at Rome, the case stands as 
badly as it does with this interpretation of Scripture. 
Perrone cites Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Papias, 
Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, Caius, Clement of 
Alexandria, and a long list of later writers, in favor 
of the three positions above mentioned, without dis- 
tinguishing what points they severally support. 
But when they are accurately examined, their prov- 
ing force becomes much less than when thus indis- 

1 Vol. iv., p. 229 ff, -2 Jbid.y p. 235. 



14 The Roman System. 

criminately quoted. Clement of Rome (i Cor. v.) 
simply says that Peter suffered martyrdom, but does 
not say where, nor hint at any residence at Rome. 
The passage in Ignatius (Rom. iv.) is : *' I do not, as 
Peter and Paul, issue commandments to you." Ig- 
natius is addressing the Romans, and it is inferred 
that Peter was at Rome, as Paul certainly was. But 
may not the " commandments " have been communi- 
cated by letter? Not all the apostolic letters are 
preserved (Col. iv. i6). Papias' testimony, as we 
have already seen, has nothing to do with the case. 
We learn nothing from Clement of Alexandria, as 
before shown. For Dionysius we are referred to 
Eusebius, in whom all the extant fragments of his 
writings are preserved. The pertinent passage (ii. 
25) is: "You have thus by such an admonition 
bound together the planting of Peter and Paul at 
Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and 
likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught 
together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyr- 
dom at the same time." Such evidence is altogether 
untrustworthy, since, as Hase points out, we know 
from the two epistles of Paul to the Corinthians that 
Peter did not join in the planting of the Corinthian 
Church, though a party there called itself by his name, 
as another did by the name of Christ, who was never 
there, and since we also know that Peter did not go 
to Rome with Paul, who went alone as a prisoner. 
Thus Dionysius is discredited. In Irenaeus, who was 
in Rome in the year 176, we find the first clear state- 
ment that Peter was in Rome ; and Caius (about 210) 
supports the same view. After that it is the un- 



Peter not Bishop of Rome, 15 

doubted tradition. We should not distrust this, were 
it not for difficulties arising from the New Testa- 
ment; but how Peter could have been at Rome, 
especially for the twenty-five years which the Roman 
tradition ascribes to him, when at every decisive 
point where we should expect some evidence of it 
the Scripture preserves entire silence, it is difficult to 
imagine. In the year 44 he is in Jerusalem in 
prison ; in 50 Paul finds him again in Jerusalem ; in 
the Epistle to the Romans, written in 58, no refer- 
ence is made to him, which is very strange if he was 
then in Rome, or had ever been there, especially as 
bishop ; and when Paul arrives in Rome (60), again 
there is utter silence as to any meeting with Peter, 
so that he could not have been there. If, then, we 
might readily admit, as a simple and harmless his- 
torical possibility, or even probability, that Peter was 
at some time in Rome, as the foundation of an argu- 
ment, and of so stupendous an argument as the 
Church of Rome derives from it, it is quite without 
proof 

(2) That Peter was ever bishop at Rome is against 
the earliest authorities. Perrone says : ^ *' AH those 
agree [that he was bishop] who give a catalogue of 
the Roman pontiffs, since they with equal reason 
begin it with Peter, of whom are Irenaeus, Tertullian, 
Eusebius, Optatus, and others later, as many, namely, 
as have compiled this catalogue." But Irenaeus says 
at the place quoted (iii. 3) : " The blessed apostles, 
then, having founded and built up the Church, com- 
mitted unto the hands of Linus the office of the epis- 

1 Vol. iv., p. 230. 



i6 The Roman System. 

copate!' When he says below that '' Eleutherius 
does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold 
inheritance of the episcopate,'' the series of which 
Eleutherius is the twelfth begins, not with the apos- 
tles, or with one of them, but with Linus. Tertullian 
{Prescr, 32) claims that all the apostolic churches 
should be able to show that their first bisliop had 
for " his ordainer and predecessor some one of the 
apostles," and says that this is the case with Rome, 
'' which makes Clement to have been ordained by 
Peter." The whole chapter is strongly against the 
idea that any apostle held a local bishopric. Euse- 
bius nowhere makes any such statement as Perrone 
requires, and in iii. 2 says expressly : '' Linus was the 
first to obtain the episcopate of the Church at 
Rome." Optatus is a writer of the fourth century, 
and, of course, has no independent value. On the 
whole, then, it is reasonably certain that Peter was 
never bishop at Rome, and that in the first centuries 
it was not supposed that he was. The idea is of 
later growth, and has no argumentative value what- 
ever.^ 

(3) The foundation of the martyrdom at Rome 
must be equally uncertain. 

§ 10. If such is the case with the apostolicity of 
the Church at Rome, how is it with its catholieity ? 
This note is defined by Perrone as consisting in two 
elements, in '' universal diffusion over the earth," and 

1 Gregory the Great once founded the Roman primacy on the suc- 
cession to Paul! "Saul, converted to Christianity, was made the 
head of the nations, because he obtained the sovereignty over the whole 
Church" {qtcia obtlnuit totlus ecclesicB principatMm). Hase, p. 131, 
quoted from the passage on I Ki. v. 



Catholicity. 17 

in " identity as to faith and communion in whatever 
place." ^ Gibbons lays chief emphasis upon the 
former element.^ We may at once grant that the 
Roman Church is very large, and is found in almost 
every quarter of the world ; that it has developed a 
very great missionary activity ; and that it does teach 
the same doctrine everywhere. But to catholicity 
ought to be reckoned, certainly, such inclusiveness 
that every true and humble child of God might find 
its place in the Church. Does the Roman Church 
exclude no true Christian? And is her defense 
against such exclusion, that the mere fact of separa- 
tion from Rome is evidence of heresy or culpable 
schism, valid ? It is, if Rome's claims of authority 
are true ; but without those claims, it is not. Cath- 
olicity, as Rome phrases it, is, therefore, nothing 
more nor less than the supreme and sole right of 
Rome to the title of Church. And hence the full 
refutation of her claim to catholicity cannot be 
given till the character of her claims to unhmited 
authority is examined. 

To sustain their claim to genuine catholicity 
Roman Catholic writers discuss missions. Catholic 
and Protestant. But what they say about Protestant 
missions is often founded upon great misunderstand- 
ing. As to their relative success, Protestant mis- 
sionaries ordinarily count as converts only those 
who are admitted to communion, and these are those 
in respect to whom there may be a reasonable hope 
that they belong to the true household of faith by 
regeneration. CathoHcs, on the contrary, generally 

1 Vol. iv., p. 60. 2 F. F., p. 50 ff. 

2 



1 8 The Roman System, 

reckon all their nominal adherents. Where Catholic 
missions and Protestant have been brought into con- 
tact, as in Turkey, the Protestant population has 
steadily grown, while, the Catholic has generally 
remained stationary. Heinrich ^ reproaches Protes- 
tantism that the native races of America have died out 
where it has flourished, while in Catholic regions 
they have been preserved and incorporated with the 
immigrant people. But it is also true that the native 
population of Mexico, for example, has been left in 
a very ignorant and degraded state by the Catholic 
Church, while Protestant methods are gradually 
making a civilized people of the present Indians of 
the United States. And for that, the United States 
Indians are about as numerous now as when the 
country was first colonized. Even the Jesuit mis- 
sions among these Northern tribes were almost, if 
not quite, failures, so fierce were the savages. The 
claim that, after all, the *' Catholic " Church has been 
the great and only missionary power in Christian 
history to the exclusion of the Greek Church as well 
as the Protestant, can be maintained only by identify- 
ing the early and pre-Charlemagne Church with the 
present Roman Church, which cannot be ji^Tstified, 
by claiming also that the Greek Church did in those 
early ages all that she did do as '' Catholic," which 
would not be true in the Roman sense of the word, 
and by denying plain facts as to Protestant missions. 
Even the comparatively small body of American 
Congregationalists, with about 600,000 communicants 
at home, has 40,000 communicants, converts from 

1 Vol. i., p. 481. 



Holiness. 19 

heathenism, in mission churches, and the rest of 
Protestantism has many more. 

In a word, Rome is not truly cathoHc, if she does 
not embrace all Christians ; and she does not do this 
unless exclusion from her body unmakes the Chris- 
tian character of a man. But this, nobody else 
besides herself will admit ; and her arguments for it 
will be carefully refuted in the sequel. 

§ II. The holiness of the Church is defined by 
the Roman Catechism as consisting in its consecration 
to God, its union with Christ, the head, and its sole 
possession of the sacrificial cultus and of the sacra- 
ments, which are means of grace effecting true holi- 
ness.^ Cardinal Gibbons ^ emphasizes the holy teach- 
ings of the Church, which are calculated to call forth 
holy lives, and dwells upon the books of devotion 
which have been written in the Church, and upon the 
martyrs and confessors whose names adorn her 
history. That much of this is true, that many of 
these martyrs have been faithful witnesses to their 
Lord, Protestants have no disposition to deny. We 
may claim for ourselves such marytrs as Polycarp, 
Cyprian, Blandina, Perpetua, and Felicitas, for they 
are marytrs of Christianity, not specially of the 
Catholic Church. We recognize many of the saints 
of the calendar as holy men and women, though 
our selection of those most worthy of honor would 
be determined rather by the evidence they gave of 
living union to Christ, and by the works of common 
morality among men, than by ascetic self-mortification. 
We prefer an Athanasius to a Simeon Stylites, a 

1 Part I., chap, x., quest, xii. 2 p y., p. 35 ff. 



20 The Roman System. 

Bernard of Clairvaux to a John of Nepomuk. There 
have been Protestant martyrs, too : Huss, burned at 
Constance, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Barrow, Green- 
wood, etc., etc. And if there are CathoHc mission- 
» 

aries who now lay down their lives for their Lord, 
Protestants can point to bishops Patteson and Han- 
nington, to Stephens in Mexico, and to a long roll 
of others whose names might be rehearsed. Whether 
or not a reader can lay down Butler's Lives of the 
Saints '* with a sweet and tranquil devotion," as the 
cardinal says, will depend somewhat upon the degree 
of offense which incredible narrations give him ; 
while '' a troubled mind and a sense of vindictive 
bitterness " which may be excited, as he also says, by 
Fox's Book of Martyrs, will be stirred up, if at all, 
by the tales there unfolded of the cruelty of Rome 
against men who had offended in nothing but in believ- 
ing in Jesus Christ as the sole mediator between God 
and man. We cannot pass in silence, however, 
over the charge which Archbishop Gibbons makes 
against Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Knox, and Henry 
VIII, , that '' the private lives of these pseudo-reformers 
were stained by cruelty, rapine, and licentiousness." 
Henry VIII. was not a reformer, and not a Protestant, 
except as he rejected the supremacy of the bishop 
of Rome. In theology he remained entirely a 
Romanist. But against the remaining reformers not 
a tittle of the charge is true. More self-denying men 
than these never lived. A more peaceful man than 
Luther, when deeds of violence were contemplated, 
never breathed. Of licentiousness, not a trace can 
be found in one of them except in Zwingle, who con- 



Holiness. 2i 

fesses youthful indiscretions while still a Cathohc 
celibate priest, but against whose character after his 
entrance upon the work of reform not a particle 
of evidence exists, except that he married, as did also 
the others. Rome may call this Hcentiousness, but 
Protestants call the marriage relation chaste, as does 
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. xiii. 4). 
It is sometimes argued that Luther broke with Rome 
in order to indulge his lusts, and his marriage to 
Catherine von Bora is quoted as the sufficient proof 
He posted his theses in 15 17, was excommunicated 
in 1520, met his future wife first in 1523, and married 
in 1525. No enemy raised a word against his chastity 
before that marriage. The simple dates disprove the 
argument. And the marriage, instead of being a 
wrong, has been an unspeakable blessing to the 
Church, for it settled the question of marriage among 
the clergy, and founded that most useful of all insti- 
tutions, the Protestant parsonage, with its wife and 
children, as the model home of the community. 
Such lapses from candor and truth upon the cardinal's 
part as were committed in this charge, are, fortunately, 
rare. 

The Church is holy, not only as being consecrated 
to God, and standing in a living relation to Christ, 
but also as being composed of '^ saints" — i. e.^ of per- 
sons who truly believe upon Christ and are forgiven of 
God for his sake. That Church is invisible, though it 
is organized upon earth in a variety of forms. Some 
of its members are to be found in the Roman 
Catholic Church, and so much of a share has that 
Church in the designation holy. But the Church of 



22 The Roinan System. 

Rome, as a visible institution, is not therefore holy, 
and membership in her, even the occupation of the 
papal chair, does not necessarily carry holiness 
with it. Even Mohler says of certain popes, 
'' Hell has swallowed them up." ^ Externally she does 
not bear indisputably the mark of hoHness. 

§ 12. Unity. This is the most important note of 
the Church from the Catholic standpoint. Cardinal 
Gibbons includes in his definition of it substan- 
tially the definition which Bellarmine gives of 
the Church, for he writes : '' By unity is meant 
that the members of the true Church must be 
united in the belief of the same doctrines of revelation, 
and in the acknowledgment of the authority of the 
same pastors." ^ The Roinmi Catechism^ after defin- 
ing unity as consisting in having one Lord, one faith, 
one baptism, adds immediately : '' There is also one 
ruler and governor of it, both invisible, Christ, and 
visible, namely he who at any time occupies the 
Roman see of Peter, the prince of the apostles, as 
his legitimate successor."^ 

§ 13. The ideal of unity in the Church is one 
which has a great influence upon the mind, and 
properly so. In these days the press is full of utter- 
ances which bear testimony to the interest of Chris- 
tendom in the thought of a possibility of the reunion 
of all branches of the Church. It is not surprising 
that the thought of the unity of the Roman Church 
should stir some of the deepest emotions of the 
Catholic. Cardinal Gibbons gives expression to such 

1 Symbolik, p. 353. 2 p. F., p. 23. 

3 Part I., chap, x., quest, x. 



Ideal of Unity. 23 

feelings. After speaking of the divisions among 
Protestants, and even among those of the same name, 
as the Baptists and Methodists, he goes on to say : 
'' Where, then, shall we find this essential unity of 
faith and government? I answer, confidently, no- 
where save in the Catholic Church. The number of 
Catholics in the world is computed at two hundred 
and twenty-five millions. They have all * one Lord, 
one faith, one baptism,' one creed. They receive the 
same sacraments, they worship at the same altar, and 

pay allegiance to one common Head How subhme 

and consohng is the thought that, whithersoever a 
Catholic goes over the broad world, whether he 
enters his church in Pekin or in Melbourne, in Lon- 
don, or Dublin, or Paris, or Rome, or New York, or 
San Francisco, he is sure to hear the self-same doctrine 
preached, to assist at the same sacrifice, and to partake 
of the same sacraments." Unity of organization, 
unity of faith, unchangeability through the succes- 
sive ages, these are great ideas. 

§ 14. And yet, loudly as she claims it, and much 
as the thought of it stirs the hearts of her children, 
Rome does not possess unity. She has divisions 
within her fold and antagonisms as sharp as exist be- 
tween the various Protestant sects. Franciscans and 
Dominicans have quarreled for ages. Even arch- 
bishops in the United States do not always agree. 
We shall see that the supposed unchangeability of 
her system of doctrine is not a fact, but a fancy. 
Thomists and Scotists are to be found in her theo- 
logical schools. But there is a more serious objec- 
tion than this to her claim of unity. Such a fact as 



24 The Roman System, 

perfect external unity, if it were a fact, would amount 
to little, if it could be shown that Rome had always 
driven out of her fold every one who would not fol- 
low in a certain bent which she was determined with- 
out just reason to impose. Her unity would then 
be purchased at the cost of all right to the designa- 
tion of unity, and she would be really the great 
mother of schism. Now this is just what she has 
done ; and she deserves the name not so much of 
the one Church, as of the chief schismatic of Chris- 
tian history. 

Let us look, for a little, at her history in this 
regard. 

(i) The original condition of the Church, as con- 
stituted about the time of the Council of Nice (325), 
was that of a general confederation of churches upon 
the basis of the equality of their bishops, or, subse- 
quently, of their patriarchs. This general or cath- 
olic Church could summon councils for the discus- 
sion of great questions of the faith or of practice, 
and was particularly distinguished by the interchange 
of good offices and the maintenance of ecclesiastical 
communion. If the Cathohc Church, as such, is an 
unchangeable institution, then this is the CathoHc 
Church, and in it there is no pope. 

(2) The growth of the Roman system led the 
bishops of Rome to assume a position of su- 
periority to the other patriarchs and of author- 
ity over them. The steps of this process will 
be detailed at a later point. Enough to say that 
the papal claims underwent a fundamental change 
from the time when Gregory the Great pro- 



Roman Schisms. 25 

tested against the title of Universal Bishop. The 
first great result was the separation of Rome from 
the Greek Church. This was made in 867 by decree 
of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, upon vari- 
ous alleged grounds, but upon the real ground that 
the pope had interfered arbitrarily, like an abso- 
lute monarch, in the government of the Greek 
Church. Affairs remained unsettled, and there were 
various interchanges of excommunication and other 
courtesies till the year 1054, when the Greek patri- 
arch and Church were formally excommunicated by 
the pope. In 1453 ^ formal union of the two 
Churches was made, but it amounted to nothing. 
The true occasion of all the trouble was the unwar- 
ranted claim of the pope to universal supremacy. 
The Greek Church would not submit ; and the ef- 
forts making at the present writing (1895) for a re- 
union between the two communions will also be 
wrecked upon the same old rock.^ 

(3) The Great Schism (i 378-141 5), when there 
were rival popes and rival papal courts, and a divided 
Europe, was exclusively an affair of the papacy. 

(4) The Calixtine schism in Bohemia is another 
case where Rome was the aggressor. She burnt Huss 
at Constance, though he had received an imperial 
safe-conduct, and her act was nothing more nor less 
than a judicial murder. According to the canonical 
law of the time, which Huss himself accepted, a per- 
son convicted of heresy and persevering in the same, 
was to be executed by fire. But Huss was not con- 

1 They have been (1898). Compare the recent efforts to obtain 
Roman recognition of the validity of the Anglican orders. 



26 The Roman System, 

victed of heresy. The main charge against him, 
that he denied transubstantiation, was false, for there is 
every evidence that he accepted it. His views upon the 
Church were pecuhar, and no doubt clashed with the 
prevailing doctrine of the day, but they were based 
upon Augustine, and furthermore, since no recog- 
nized article of faith upon this topic had been put 
forth authoritatively, they could not be heretical. 
His execution was, therefore, nothing but a judicial 
murder.^ Thus, so far as this was the occasion of the 
separation of the Calixtines, it was the unjustifiable 
act of Rome. Or if the demand of the cup at the 
communion be regarded as the occasion of the 
schism, the withdrawal of the cup was never an 
article of faith, but only a disciplinary regulation. 
To refuse to bend her discipline at such a point as 
this, was to display that love of rule and that indif- 
ference to the demands of Christian gentleness and 
charity which are themselves the cause of an inward, 
schism, even if no outward schism result. But here 
was an outward schism, and it was of Rome's mak- 
ing. 

(5) The Protestant Church was cast out by Rome, 
which thus made the existing schism between it and 
herself Luther in 1520 had departed from the Ro- 
man system in two vital points by propounding the 
doctrine of justification by faith, and by denying the 
infallibility of general councils. But the papal bull 
of excommunication did not mention the former; 
and as to the latter, it was not an officially defined 
doctrine at that time, however rooted in the general 

^ See Herzog, Realencyclopadie, vol. vi., p. 392. 



Roman Schisms. 27 

system of the Church. He had, in addition, opposed 
a great many abuses and practices which others also 
condemned. The bull condemned forty-one propo- 
sitions from his works/ among which was the precise 
doctrine of Augustine and of the Council of Orange 
upon the certainty of sin after the fall,^ as well as 
many other matters, of great doubtfulness, to say the 
least. Such a bull was a theological blunder of high 
rank ; but it was also a great blunder of policy, for 
it cut off a man whom Christian charity would have 
sought to win, by the exercise of arbitrary power 
and in utter blindness to his importance. A more 
fatal mistake the see of Rome never made than the 
issuing of this document. 

Now, in these four cases of schism, if the Roman 
Church had really possessed by right the power 
which she exercised, even then her acts w^ould be 
unjustifiable because illegal or defective in form, and 
arbitrary in spirit and method. It is not necessary, 
therefore, to deny at this point her power, though 
this will come in the regular development of our 
subject. It is enough to say that what power she 
possessed was improperly exercised, that she herself 
was the aggressor and was guilty of schism, and that 
she has thereby forever lost her claim to the note 

^ See the full Latin text in Schaff 's History of the Christian Church, 
vol. vi., p. 233 ff. 

2 Luther's doctrine as condemned {op. cit.,-p. 239) was thus expressed: 
" Liberum arbitrium post pcccatum est res de solo titu/o, et dum facit quod 
in seesi, pcccat mortaliter." The Council of Orange (529) said : *' Nulla 
vero facit homo bona quae non Deus praestat ut facial homo;'' and: 
" Nemo habetde suo nisi mendacium et peccatum." Text in Bright's Anti- 
Pel. Treatises, p. 389. 



28 The Roman System, 

of unity. And thus she is found defective in every 
one of the notes which she declares the true Church 
of Christ must possess. 

§ 15. The attentive reader cannot have failed to 
notice how one underlying idea is common to all 
the various topics- which have been passed in review 
in the present chapter, and how necessary it is to the 
proof of every position taken by the Roman Church 
as to the nature and notes of the Church, the idea 
of the Church's authority. The argument for the iden- 
tification of the visible with the true Church halted 
till her authority was assumed. She has catholicity 
and unity only if her exclusiveness is based upon 
authority to declare who is and who is not a mem- 
ber of the body of Christ. Her connection with 
Peter rests not upon objective historical proofs, but 
upon her own traditions, which derive their value 
from her authority. And so with her holiness. 
While, therefore, a partial refutation of her claims 
has been already given, we have still the main por- 
tion of the contest before us, and must now proceed 
to discuss the vital center of the doctrine of the 
Church. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 

§ 1 6. The Vatican Council describes at great length 
the institution by Christ himself of the apostolic pri- 
macy in the person of Peter, affirms that this primacy 
is perpetual in the Roman pontiffs, and divides it into 
two branches, the power of jurisdiction and that of 
infallible teaching. For convenience' sake the two 
will be separated in the following treatment, and the 
more fundamental taken first.^ If there resides in 
the papacy the power of infallibly determining the 
truth upon disputed matters of faith and morals, so 
that whoever is declared heretical by his disagree- 
ment w^ith the authoritative definitions of Rome, is 
really such, then there can be little difficulty in ac- 
cepting any judicial acts by which such a previous 
decision is carried into effect. 

I. Definition of the Infallibility of the Church, 
§ 17. The doctrine of the Church was not treated 
by the Council of Trent, though the whole assump- 
tion upon which that council proceeded was of its 
own infallibility. Hence its anathemas and the rigor 
with which its decrees were enforced in the Catholic 
Church. It was, however, the very object of the 
Vatican Council to define this doctrine, and particu- 

^ The topic of jurisdiction will be takcji up in Chapter V., below. 

29 



30 The Roman System, 

larly the infallibility of the Church, which it made to 
reside in the pope. The result reached was ex- 
pressed in the following language : 

" Therefore faithfully adhering to the tradition re- 
ceived from the beginning of the Christian faith, for 
the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the 
Cathohc rehgion, and the salvation of Christian peo- 
ple, the sacred council approving, we teach and de- 
fine that it is a dogma divinely revealed : that the 
Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra — that 
is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doc- 
tor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apos- 
tolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith 
and morals to be held by the universal Church — by 
the divine assistance promised to him in blessed 
Peter, is possessed of that infalUbility with which the 
divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be 
endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or 
morals ; and that therefore such definitions of the 
Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and 
not from the consent of the Church." ^ 

§ 1 8. This definition, short as it is, has been gener- 
ally misunderstood by ordinary Protestant readers, 
and indeed represents a line of thought so remote 
from the Protestant mind as to require conscious ef- 
fort to enter into it sufficiently to obtain a clear 
understanding of it. The importance of the subject 
will therefore require that considerable attention be 
devoted to it, and that it be cleared of all misappre- 
hensions. We shall follow the specially careful and 
clear discussion of Heinrich. 

^ Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii., p. 270 f. 



Definition of Infallibility. 31 

In this definition are presupposed, says our author, 
the following principles : the primacy of Peter over 
the whole Church in jurisdiction, immediately be- 
stowed by our Lord ; that he* has a successor in this 
primacy, who is the Roman bishop ; that he has 
plenary and supreme jurisdiction, and hence is the su- 
preme j udge, particularly in matters of faith, from whom 
there is no appeal ; that the office of teaching is an es- 
sential element of his jurisdiction ; and that he is infal- 
lible in the due exercise of it.^ '' The single advance 
made by the Vatican decree in the formulation of 
Catholic dogma consisted in this, that the Gallican 
doctrine, according to which decisions of the pope 
were to become unchangeable only through the con- 
sent of the Church, which had always been censured 
as erroneous, was formally rejected as heretical, and the 
opposed truth . . . formally defined." ^ 

The pope — that is, the reigning pope — possesses 
this authority, but not as a private person, e. g., in 
his capacity as an author, nor as a secular prince, nor 
as bishop of the city of Rome, metropolitan of the 
Roman province, or patriarch of the West, but 
simply as supreme head of the entire Church. As 
such he possesses it not in all of his official acts, but 
only in his cathedratic decisions upon matters per- 
taining to faith and morals. If his decisions do not 

1 The reader should carefully note that the Ihings " presupposed " 
as necessary to the infallibility of the pope derive their first proof, as 
already shown, from that infallibility. So that the system involves a 
circle in reasoning, depending for its teaching as to Peter upon the 
luthority of the Church, and for the full authority of the Church upon 
its doctrine as to Peter. 

^ Dogmatische Theologie, vol. ii., p. 243. 



2)2 The Ro77ian System, 

pertain to faith and morals, but are, for example, 
administrative measures, even when formed in the 
interest of the faith, or if they are not cathedratic, 
they do not possess infallibility. Thus the pope 
might forbid certain expressions to be used, because 
misused by heretics, or he might, in answer to some 
request, expound matters of faith without intending 
to define a doctrine and lay upon the Church the 
obligation to believe it, and in neither case would he 
possess infallibility. All theologians admit that the 
pope may hold an erroneous opinion upon some 
matter of faith, and some have even maintained, 
though Heinrich would not join them in this, that 
the pope might become personally a heretic. But 
none of these things affect his infallibility in his de- 
cisions ex cathedra. 

Nor is the papal infallibility a kind of omniscience, 
which is a divine attribute, and which could not be 
conferred upon a mortal man by the Holy Spirit, 
any more than the omnipotence of God. It is pre- 
cisely that qualification in the pope for his work which 
the historic Protestant theory of inspiration ascribes 
to the writers of the New Testament. They were 
preserved from all error while engaged in the com- 
position of these books ; and so the pope is conceived 
to be preserved from error when exercising ex cathe- 
dra his teaching office in the Church. 

§ 19. What, then, is precisely a definition ex eatli- 
edra^ in which the pope possesses the infallibility 
w^hich Christ has given to his Church ? This is evi- 
dently the vital center of the matter. Heinrich goes 
on to explain it as follows : The definitions of the 



Definition of Infallibility. 33 

pope are cathedratic when {a) he defines a doctrine 
concerning faith or morals, and when {p) he obh'gates 
the universal Church to hold such doctrine. To ex- 
pand, the definition must be a decision which the 
pope makes as highest judge, and that definitively. 
It has nothing to do with merely temporary and pro- 
visional regulations. This decision must define a 
doctrine — that is, a universally valid truth, or a uni- 
versally valid principle. The mere application of a 
general principle to a particular case, as, for example, 
to the validity of some single marriage, does not fall 
under this head. The doctrine must be one of faith 
or morals. If it is such a decision, it is enough that 
it should be intended by the pope to bind the con- 
science of the Church, and should be proposed as an 
unchangeable law for the faithful. That it should be 
set forth in any particular form, or with any special 
phrases, as with the customary anathema, is not 
necessary. Everything depends upon the design of 
the pope. Has he purposed to bind the Church in 
consequence of his possessing the power of the keys ? 
If so, his definition is infallible. Nor is any particu- 
lar manner of publishing the decree essential to its 
infallibility. It must, to be sure, be framed in perfect 
freedom, for a decision called forth by fear, or under 
a deception, would be no cathedratic decision. And fi- 
nally, the purpose of the pope to speak ex catliecha can 
be determined for us by no private judgment, but only 
by ecclesiastical authority itself It is clear '' when it is 
made manifest by the words employed, or by the 
context, or from other declarations of the papal chair." 
Such expressions as '' define " or '' declare " exhibit 
3 



.^r^ 



34 The Roman System, 

it. If it is said expressly that the purpose of the 
pope is to declare a truth in question to be a revealed 
truth, or if his freedom in issuing such decision is 
explicitly stated, or a previous examination of the 
matter mentioned, or if the Holy Ghost is invoked, 
the cathedratic character of the decision is made 
certain. Everything depends upon the ascertained 
purpose of the pope, however that purpose may 
be ascertained. 

The importance of this topic will justify the intro- 
duction of a somewhat long quotation from Cardinal 
Gibbons, who has put the matter in the following 
lucid way : 

**The pope, therefore, be it known, is not the 
maker of the divine law ; he is only its expounder. 
He is not the author of revelation, but only its inter- 
preter. All revelation came from God alone through 
his inspired ministers, and was complete in the begin- 
ning of the Church. The holy father has no more 
authority than you or I to break one iota or tittle of 
the Scripture, and he is equally with us the servant 
of the divine law. 

" In a word, the sovereign pontiff is to the Church, 
though in a more eminent degee, w^hat the chief 
justice is to the United States. We have an instru- 
ment called the Constitution of the United States, 
which is the charter of our civil rights and liberties. 
If a controversy arise between two States regarding a 
constitutional clause, the question is referred, in the 
last resort, to the Supreme Court at Washington. 
The chief justice, with his associate judges, examines 
into the case, and then pronounces judgment upon 



Definition of InfaUibility. 35 

it ; and this decision is final, irrevocable, and practi- 
cally infallible. 

*' If there were no such court to settle constitu- 
tional questions, the constitution itself would soon 
become a dead letter. Every litigant would consci- 
entiously decide the dispute in his own favor, and 
anarchy and separation and civil war would soon 
follow. But by means of this supreme court dis- 
putes are ended, and the political union of the States 
is perpetuated. There would have been no civil war 
in 1 86 1 had our domestic quarrel been submitted to 
the legitimate action of our highest court of judica- 
ture, instead of being left to the arbitrament of the 
sword. 

'' The revealed word of God is the constitution of 
the Church. This is the Magna Cliarta of our 
Christian liberties. The pope is the official guardian 
of our religious constitution, as the chief justice is the 
guardian of our civil constitution. 

*' When a dispute arises in the Church regarding 
the sense of Scripture the subject is referred to the 
pope for final adjudication. The sovereign pontiff, 
before deciding the case, gathers around him his 
venerable colleagues, the cardinals of the Church ; 
or he calls a council of his associate judges of faith, 
the bishops of Christendom ; or he has recourse to 
other lights which the Holy Ghost may suggest to 
him. Then, after mature and prayerful deliberation, 
he pronounces judgment, and his sentence is final, 
irrevocable, and infallible. 

'' If the Catholic Church were not fortified by this 
divinely established supreme tribunal, she would be 



36 The Roman System, 

broken up like the sects around her into a thousand 
fragments, and rehgious anarchy would soon follow ; 
but by means of this infallible court her marvelous 
unity is preserved throughout the world. This doc- 
trine is the keystone in the arch of Catholic faith, 
and, far from arousing opposition, it ought to com- 
mand the unqualified admiration of every reflecting 
mind." ^ 

§ 20. Ideal. The attractiveness of this doctrine 
of infallibility and its influence over the Catholic mind 
have been already powerfully set forth by the very 
form in which Cardinal Gibbons defends it. It is in- 
separably connected with the whole conception of 
the Church in which he has been educated. The 
visible Church represents to him the invisible Christ 
in whom he is to believe. From her he derives his 
instruction, by her he is brought to the Saviour, and 
all that he knows of redemption is conveyed to him 
by her offices and sacraments. She must, then, be 
infallible, incapable herself of error, and incapable of 
deceiving him, if he is to have any certainty of salva- 
tion, or, indeed, any acquaintance with it. As Mohlcr 
strongly puts it : " The authority of the Church 
communicates all that in the Christian religion which 
rests upon authority and is authority, viz., the Chris- 
tian religion itself; so that Christ himself continues 
to be authority for us only so far as the Church is 
an authority." ^ 

But not alone to Catholics is this idea one of at- 
tractiveness and power. Father Hecker, who was 
associated with Unitarian transcendentalists before 

^ F. F., p. 148 ff. 2 Symholik, p. 341. 



Ideal of InfaUibility, 37 

his conversion to the Roman Church, expresses him- 
self thus : '' The first and deepest want of man's 
heart is guidance; but it must be an unerring and 
divine guidance. Nothing less than this can give 
repose to man's feehngs and the sense of security to 
his intelHgence. Such a guidance alone can give 
to man happiness, and ennoble his being while he 
obeys." ^ In the conflicts of modern thinking, a man 
of feeble Christian experience, or little power of 
analytic thought, must often long for guidance, and 
then the idea of an ancient institution, such as the 
Roman Church is, and of infallible authority to con- 
vey the very truth of God to weak man, such as 
Rome claims, will rise before him in grandeur and 
beauty. Its attractiveness will seem so great that 
he will require more earnestness and care than some 
have shown if he do not accept it upon its simple 
claim to possess the eagerly desired power to guide 
him, without examination whether that claim have 
any foundation in fact. The long procession of men 
who have gone from the Anglican into the Roman 
communion because they could accept no ministry 
that did not have an authority behind it which 
they could not find in their own Church, and could 
rest in no system of doctrine for which the definite 
decision of some authoritative tribunal did not speak, 
has given mournful illustration of the power of the 
Roman claim. Except a man have within him the 
witness of the Spirit and know him in whom he 
has believed, he is likely to fall a prey to any such 
idea, whatever former prejudices may have done to 

^ Questions of the Soul, p. 112. 



38 The Roman System. 

fortify him against it. In facing this claim of the 
Roman Church, the Protestant thinker is facing a 
power which it does not become him to beHttle. 

II. Dogmatic Proof and Reply. 

§21. As a portion of the Roman system, this doctrine 
is naturally and properly supported by the general 
presuppositions of that system, as, for example, the 
necessity that the Church should exercise the office 
of an infallible teacher in the world. The dignity of 
the giver of revelation, the weakness of men, the neces- 
sity of agreement in faith in different parts of the world, 
are the various moments of this necessity. But the 
condition of the argument, as it is now passing in re- 
view before us, may excuse all attempt at reply to these 
points. Only an appeal to some acknowledged source 
of evidence can at present be of any importance. 
This is afforded by the argument from the Scriptures, 
to which we therefore pass without further delay. 

§ 22. Three texts in particular are quoted by the 
Roman dogmaticians, of which the first is Matt. xvi. 
18 : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build 
my church ; and the gates of Hades shall not pre- 
vail against it." This is supposed to teach the in- 
fallibility of the Church, for if she fell into error, 
the gates of Hades would certainly have prevailed 
against her. And, since Peter is the foundation 
of the Church, he must also be the foundation of her 
infallibility. The second text is John xxi. 15-17, in 
which the charge is given to Peter to '' feed my lambs 
— my sheep." This is said to confer upon Peter, and 
upon Peter alone, since it is never addressed to any 



Proof of Infallibility. 39 

other disciple, the pastoral ofifice over the entire 
flock of Christ. The third text is Luke xxii. 32 : 
*' But I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail 
not : and do thou, when once thou hast turned 
again, stabHsh thy brethren." This is thought to 
teach that Peter and his successors will be preserved 
from all error, and that upon them is laid the care of 
the faith of all Christians. 

§ 23. But these last two texts, in particular, are ver}^ 
much simpler in their reference than all this. In the 
passage from Luke our Lord has just been speaking 
of his betrayal, and on occasion of a contention 
among the disciples as to which should be the great- 
est in his kingdom, has made them a promise of 
ultimate glory, which he specially emphasizes in case 
of Peter by the assurance of the text, which, without 
going into any farther explanation, he couples with 
a portentous intimation of apostasy. His meaning 
cannot be doubtful to any reader of the subsequent 
history. Or, if it could, the presumption of Peter, 
who is ready to follow him *' to prison and to death," 
leads him to mention at once, without any ambiguity, 
the future fall of that apostle and his base denial, 
and renders the intimation of the former passage quite 
clear. This interpretation is enough, is in accord- 
ance with the context, and, in the perfect equaHty 
which seems to prevail among the apostles in the 
New Testament, is rather a proof of Peter's infe- 
riority to his brethren in one respect, that of stead- 
fastness, than a promise of exaltation above them. So 
the second passage is well and sufficiently explained 
by the very significant fact that it contains the first 



40 The Roman System, 

discourse of our Lord with Peter after the denial. 
It was indeed a question whether Peter did truly love 
his Lord. And in return for his assurance of undy- 
ing affection he was, we might say, reinstated in the 
apostolic office ; but that he was given any primacy 
over the apostles, or any infallible teaching power, 
is not for an instant hinted in the passage. It may, 
indeed, be granted to the Roman argument that, if 
there were any otlicr evidence of a primacy of Peter, 
this passage might be taken, by way of inference, as 
referring to that primacy in one aspect. But in lack 
of such evidence it has no proving power of its own. 
§ 24. The argument therefore returns to the first- 
cited text. Matt. xvi. 18. It is historically and dog- 
matically the great text in the New Testament which 
Rome can cite for herself, and which she has done 
well to inscribe around the base of the dome of St. 
Peter's cathedral. Its form has given occasion for vari- 
ous interpretations from the earliest times to the pres- 
ent. Our Lord does not say squarely that upon Peter 
his Church is to be built, and hence some have made the 
*' rock " Christ himself, some the faith, some the faith 
of Peter, and some the confession which he had just 
made, '' Thou art the Christ." ^ Yet it seems better 

1 I quote the following note from Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 25. 
—Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, in his speech prepared for, but not 
delivered in, the Vatican Council, and published at Naples in 1870, 
declares that Roman Catholics cannot establish the Petrine privilege 
from Scripture, because of the clause in the Creed of Pius IV., bmd- 
ingthem to interpret Scripture only according to the unanimous consent 
of the fathers. And he adds that there are five different patristic inter- 
pretations of St. Matt. xvi. 18: (i) that St. Peter is the rock, taught 
by seventeen fathers ; (2) that the whole apostolic college is the rock, 
represented by Peter as its chief, taught by eight ; (3) that St. Peter's 



Reply to Proof of Iitfallibility, ^1 

to admit, what the candid reader would most natur- 
ally derive from the passage, that Christ gave to 
Peter here a peculiar place in the foundation of his 
Church upon earth. And still, nothing can be plainer, 
so far as the New Testament is concerned, than that 
he gave him no such position as Rome claims for 
him. Peter had no exclusive office above the other 
apostles.^ He receives in the following verses the 
*' power of the keys," but it is also given to the 
apostles as a body in John xx. 22, 23. What the 
position here given him really was, we find from the 
subsequent history. He was the natural leader 
among the apostles by temperament and by native 
gifts. He led in the movem.ent to choose a suc- 
cessor to Judas. He preached the first sermon, at 
Pentecost. He began the w^ork among the gentiles, 
by receiving CorneHus into the Church ; but this was 
so far from being an act done in the '' plenitude of 
primatial power," that Peter was sharply questioned 
for it by the other apostles who were at Jerusalem, 
and had to defend himself by relating the special 
vision by which he had been led to this particular 
act. He soon disappears from the history, and 
instead of remaining what he must have remained 
upon the Roman theory, the acknowledged head of 

faiih is the rock, taught hy forty -four ; (4) that Christ is the rock, 
taught by sixteen ; (5) that the rock is the -whole body of the faithful. 
Several who teach (i) and (2) also teach (3) and (4), and so the arch- 
bishop sums up thus : " If we are bound to follow the greater number 
of fathers in this matter, then we must hold for certain that the word 
Petra means not Peter professing the faith, but the faith professed by- 
Peter." 

1 See Mark ix. 33-35, and Luke xxii. 24-26. 



42 The Roman System, 

every Christian enterprise, he yields to Paul in both 
prominence and usefulness. 

With these three texts the Roman argument stands 
or falls. Not that no other texts are quoted, but 
every controversialist will acknowledge that these 
are the primary and determinative passages. Hein- 
rich, in particular, quotes a great many passages from 
the historical books, specially The Acts, to show that 
Peter exercised a primacy.^ But they have no weight 
if the main passages are surrendered. Perrone does 
well to rest the case with these.^ 

§ 25. But the Protestant reply does not pause with 
the demurrer that the texts cited do not prove the 
doctrine. We regard the Scriptures as against the 
doctrine. Their whole atmosphere is against it. 
Particularly, their doctrine of the priesthood of all 
believers contradicts it. Christ has made all Chris- 
tians ''priests unto his God" (Rev. i. 6). The only 
supreme pontiff recognized in the New Testament is 
Christ, who entered into the holy place '' once for 
all," having obtained eternal redemption (Heb. ix. 
II, 12). Upon the Church as a congregation, con- 
sisting of *' two or three," is -conferred in another 
passage in Matthew's Gospel (xviii. 15-20) the power 
of excommunication, and, lest that should be mis- 
understood, the very power of the keys given a few 
pages before to Peter, is also, by almo.st superfluous 
repetition, conferred upon it, and unto it is given the 
promise of an ever-present Christ. 

The true dogmatic basis of the doctrine is, there- 

^ Dog. Theologie, vol. ii., p. 257 ff. He quotes even Acts xii. 5. 
2 Prcelectiones, vol. iv,, p. 306 ff. 



Reply to Proof of Infallibility, 43 

fore, not in the interpretation of the Scriptures : it is 
rather the result of a certain view of the Church. If, 
as Mohler says, the external church brings the sinner 
to Christ, and if he obtains spiritual gifts only through 
this external channel, if to him Christ is known only 
as he is represented by the Church, there is an indis- 
pensable necessity for the infalhble teaching authority 
of the Church. But the basis upon which this view 
rests is unwarranted. The Church of Christ is not 
to be identified, without qualification, with the visible 
church. This is Rome's prime fallacy. And without 
it the present argument falls to the ground. 

§ 26. Sometimes the argument from the nature of 
revelation, hinted at in the beginning of this section, 
is emphasized.^ If there is a necessity for a revela- 
tion, it is said, it is alone congruent with the dignity 
of that revelation as a work of God that it should 
not be exposed to the subjective interpretation of 
every individual, but should be intrusted to a plenary 
and independent authority, just as a well-ordered 
State establishes a regular tribunal for the interpre- 
tation of its statutes. But it remains to be proved 
that such an authoritative interpretation of revela- 
tion is a necessity. That the individual Christian 
cannot, in the exercise of his mind, under the guid- 
ance of the Holy Ghost, who has been promised to 

1 Heinrich, Dog. TheoL, ii., p. 159 ff. Littledale, Plain Reasons, 
p. 162, said that no one pretends that the Jews " ever had an infaUible 
hving voice to keep them from all error regarding the law of Moses." 
He rightly uses this against the Catholic argument. But Heinrich 
does not hesitate to go to the extent of claiming, for its effect on his 
argument, that the decisions of the high priest were " infallible" ! P. 
259. 



44 The Roman System. 

all believers, and not merely to the apostles (John 
xvi. 13; comp. Rom. viii. 14, 26, 32), obtain from 
the Scriptures a knowledge of the way of salva- 
tion, and be saved, is an assertion that few would 
make, and which would have no justification either 
in Scripture or in experience. The teaching office 
of the Church is unnecessarily and arbitrarily thrust 
in between the soul and its maker. 

§ 27. Indeed, the Roman argument, if it is valid so 
far as it goes, must by strict logic go still farther. 
If besides the appearance of God in the flesh and 
an inspired Bible, there is need of an infallible inter- 
preter of that Bible, then there is need of an infallible 
organ in the mind of the believer for the reception 
of this infallible interpretation, or else finally the 
inquirer may be deceived and lost. Hence the com- 
mon argument for the necessity of infallibility proves 
too much, and therefore fails to prove anything. 

Cardinal Gibbons does not consider this point, 
though he gives an ingenious turn to his argument 
in favor of infallibility. He says, speaking to the 
Protestant:^ '* Let us see, sir, whether an infallible 
Bible is sufficient for you. Either you are infallibly 
certain that your interpretation of the Bible is correct, 
or you are not. If you are infalHbly certain, then 
you assert for yourself, and of course for every 
reader of the Scripture, a personal infallibility which 
you deny to the pope, and which we claim only 
for him. You make every man his own pope." I 
interject the remark that no Protestant claims infal- 
libility in his interpretation of the Bible, but only 

1 F. F., p. 160. 



Reply to Proof of Infallibility, 45 

sufificient success to give him a ground for reasonable 
certainty that the way of salvation is thus and so. 
Certainly, of many passages in the Bible he can only 
hope for a very doubtful opinion as to their meaning 
at best, and the Catholic Church gives no better, for 
she has never authoritatively interpreted the whole 
Bible. But to resume the quotation : " If you are 
not infallibly certain that you understand the true 
meaning of the whole Bible — and this is a privilege 
you do not claim — then, I ask. Of what use to you 
is the objective infallibihty of the Bible without an in- 
fallible interpreter?" We may reply. Of as much 
use as with such an interpreter, unless one has also 
a perfect mind and is sure that he perfectly under- 
stands that interpreter. No, honest and competent 
exegesis is enough. It does not give a mathematical 
certainty, but it gives certainty enough to live by and 
die by, as similar investigation in the natural sciences 
does in their field. The Bible does not become a 
*' bundle of contradictions,"^ but it is a system of 
spiritual and life-giving truth. That is enough. 

§ 28. But, finally, the Roman Catholic doctrine of 
the infallibility of the pope is designed to supplant 
what is not merely the privilege, or the right, but 
the duty, of private judgment in matters of religion. 
In this it has a conclusive refutation of its claims. 
The subject of private judgment seems to be one 
which is peculiarly unintelligible to the Catholic 

^ lb., p. 161, Littledale (p. 184) points out that the ordinary confes- 
sor is not infallible, nor the local bishop, and that the opportunity of 
the average Catholic for getting an infallible interpretation of the 
" whole Bible," is exceedingly small ! Few make the journey to Rome, 
fewer still see the pope, very few consult him. 



46 The Ro7nan System, 

mind, for upon no controverted point are the mis- 
representations into which CathoHc apologists have 
fallen greater than here. Father Hecker asks : *' Does 
not the fundamental principle of Protestantism, the 
supremacy of private judgment, exclude all idea of 
an unerring authority in religion ?"^ We reply. No ! 
Private judgment has nothing to do with the author- 
ity of the Bible, except that Protestants, in the exer- 
cise of their judgment, have come to accept the Bible 
as authority. Even the Catholic must exercise the 
same private judgment before he can accept the 
authority of the Roman Church.^ The Bible is au- 
thority to both Catholics and Protestants. The Cath- 
olic has an authoritative interpreter of the Bible whom 
the Protestant does not accept ; but this refusal does 
not carry with it the denial of the biblical authority. 
Hecker continues : " But Protestantism . . . tends to 
make each one prefer his own judgment to that of all 
others. The beau ideal of Protestantism, logically de- 
veloped, is egotism and the idolatry of self "^ Noth- 
ing could be a greater caricature. Protestant science 
has produced a series of works in exposition of the 
Bible unequaled in scholarship and in extent. Of 
Meyer, the Catholic Dictioiiary says that he is '' one 
of the most eminent New Testament scholars — per- 
haps the most eminent who has appeared in our own 
time." * It is the '' tendency " of Protestantism to 
employ all helps wdthin the reach of the reader for 

1 Questions of the Soul, p. 129. 

2 Cardinal Gibbons says that in embracing Catholicism one does not 
surrender his " dignity or independence or reasoning powers." F. F., 
p. 17. — Yes, but does he not practically do this afterwards ? 

3 lb., p. 132. * Article " Pope," p. 668 b. 



Reply to Proof of Infallibility. 47 

the determination of the meaning of bibhcal passages, 
and to enlarge their number as the difficulty of the 
passage in hand increases ; but at last the reader has 
upon him the responsibility of deciding. Weninger 
also caricatures the Protestant idea when he repre- 
sents us as saying, when giving inquirers the Bible : 
'' Read for yourselves and discover the truth, if you 
can ; make out your own faith and hold fast to it, if 
you are able ; perhaps it will save you." ^ In respect 
to the simple matter of personal salvation, one might 
well say, " Read for yourself, and you will soon see 
w^hat you have to do," for there is in substance but 
one direction given in the Bible, and that is, " Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved "^ — a direction which it would be difficult to 
find in ordinaiy Roman books of devotion. But for 
the formation of a system of truth, the Protestant pas- 
tor would never recommend his parishioner to throw 
away all the help that ages of Christian scholarship 
have accumulated. Weninger supports his own 
position upon this point by quoting Matt, xviii. 17: 
*' If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee 
as the heathen and the publican." This text has 
nothing to do with the instruction of the Christian, 
for which he is never referred in the New Testament 
to the Church, but with obedience to the Church's 
reproofs when he has committed an offense against 
a brother. It pertains solely to matters of dis- 
cipline. 

What, then, is the Protestant principle of private 
judgment in matters of rehgion, in distinction from 

1 Catholicity , Protestantisvi, and Infidelity, p 25. 2 Acts xvi. 31. 



48 The Romaii System, 

all this misrepresentation ? Simply this, that as 
God has given to each man a mind for the investiga- 
tion of truth, he requires him to exercise^ it and to 
accept as truth only that for which he has sufficient 
reason. And, further, as God has given him a will, 
so he is held responsible for the voluntary accept- 
ance by acts of choice of what he knows to be true, 
and for the performance by individual volitions of 
what he recognizes as duty/ He need not under- 
stand fully everything, as, for example, the Trinity; 
but he may nevertheless accept it, and he is bound 
to accept it, if there are sufficient reasons in his own 
mind for accepting it as true, though it is uncompre- 
hended. So far as this is concerned, there is little 
if any difference between Protestant and Catholic. 
The Catholic says that the dicUtm of the Church is 
enough to give reason for believing any given propo- 
sition. If the Protestant accepted that statement, he 
would accept the doctrines of the Roman Church by 
the exercise of the same principle of private judg- 
ment which he now employs in rejecting the doc- 
trines of that Church. But when the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, or any like doctrine, is presented 
for his acceptance, he examines it, even after the 
Roman Church has spoken, and finds it, as he 
thinks, against sound philosophy and common sense, 
and, above all, against the Scripture, and he there- 
fore rejects it. The Catholic hears of the doctrine 

^ Cardinal Gibbons implies that the doctrine of private judgment 
requires that a person should read the Bible as a condition without 
which he cannot be saved (F. F., p. 107). No Protestant ever taught 
that doctrine. 



Private Judgment, 49 

of justification by faith, and hears that the Church 
condemns it, and he may, and often does, reject it 
without further examination, assuming that it must 
be contrary to Scripture because the Church declares 
it so. Both beheve the same thing, that God, having 
put his truth into the world, will hold each man 
strictly responsible for the treatment which he gives 
it. That constitutes the duty of private judgment. 
They differ simply as to the method by which God 
authenticates his truth before men. The error of the 
Cathohc is that he takes upon insufficient grounds 
an authority which has no real claim upon him, and 
that he then takes the judgment of that authority as 
to matters upon which a fair examination of all the 
facts would lead him irresistibly to another opinion. 
His fundamental mistake has been in accepting the 
authority of the Church without a due use of his 
private judgment. In this sense he has surrendered 
it, and failed in his duty. 

III. Historical Proof and Reply. 

Upon the historical proof the Catholic writers 
naturally lay great weight. We shall follow mainly 
the development of the argument by Heinrich,^ who 
is particularly full, though the limits of our space 
will, of course, prevent our noticing every argument, 
or even the majority of the arguments. Enough if 
the main positions, upon which all depend, and with- 
out which none is of avail, can receive adequate 
attention. 

§ 29. The first authority usually quoted is that of 

1 Vol. ii., p. 314 ff. 



50 The Roman System, 

Irenaeus, who in his third book, third chapter, has 
an interesting passage. After having treated of the 
deviations of the Gnostics from tradition and Scrip- 
ture both, he states that it is easy to determine what 
the apostoHcal tradition is, since the churches which 
the apostles founded are well known, and we are 
able to recount the succession of their bishops, and 
thus to know what they taught and what the 
apostolical tradition is. He proceeds : '' Since, how- 
ever, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as 
this, to reckon up the successions of all the churches, 
we do put to confusion all those who in whatever 
manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vain- 
glory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assem- 
ble in unauthorized meetings ; [we do this, I say,] by 
indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, 
of the very great, the very ancient, and universally 
known church founded and organized at Rome by 
the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul ; as 
also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, 
which comes down to our time by means of the suc- 
cessions of the bishops. For with this church, on 
account of its higher originality [earlier origin], every 
church must agree, that is, the faithful in everyplace, 
in which also that tradition which is derived from the 
apostles has always been preserved by those who 
resort to it from every side." ^ 

1 I have followed in general the translation of Hase (p. 158) in the last 
sentence. The passage is very difficult. Bishop Coxe, in his edition of the 
Ante-Nicene Library, in locum, quotes approvingly Catholic writers 
(Berington and Kirk), who translate : " For to this church, on account 
of more potent principality, it is necessary that every church (that is, 
those who are on every side fe-ithful) resort ; in which church ever, by 



Irenceus^ great Passage, 51 

§ 30. The argument of Heinrich from this passage 
is as follows : 

(i) The Roman Church is the chief church of the 
world. But Trenaeus does not say this at all, and 
Heinrich is obHged to get it by changing the reading 
antiquissimcE (very ancient) to precipucE ac principis 
(principal and chief) on a conjectural restoration and 
mistranslation of the original Greek, now lost. 

(2) On account of her headship, her authority, 
which she has as the church of Peter, all churches 
must agree with her. '' What agrees with Rome is 
orthodox; what departs from Rome is heretical." 
But this is not Irenaeus' argument at all. He simply 
says that he will take Rome as an example. He 
might equally well take others, but he takes Rome, 
as he expressly says, because of her greatness, an- 
tiquity, and fame. To be sure, Heinrich has got 
headship into this sentence by an emendation, as 
explained above ; but he gives no reason except the 

those who are on every side, has been preserved that tradition which is 
from the apostles." Thus, it is the eminence of the church of the im- 
perial city which leads the neighboring churches to resort to Rome ; 
and Rome, like a lens bringing their rays to a focus, is preserved by 
the surrounding churches from falling into error, rather than preserves 
them by dispensing her own light, as does the sun. Gieseler {Kirch- 
engeschichte, Bd. i., Abth. i., p. 214) agrees with Heinrich by translat- 
ing principalitatem "precedence" {Vorrang), but while Heinrich 
neglects the adjective, he renders it " more important " precedence. 
The Latin text of this pivotal sentence is : ''Ad hattc eniin ecclesiam 
propter potentiorem [so all the MSS.] principalitatem necesse est ofnneni 
convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui stent tmdique fideles, in qua semper 
ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata est ea, quae est ab apostolis, traditio." 
Gieseler remarks : " All apostolic churches had a precedence : the 
Roman Church had a more important on account of her greatness and 
of the fact that 3he was founded by the two foremost apostles," 



52 The Roman System 

somewhat stupid remark that the Church of Rome 
could not be the most ancient, when Jerusalem, for 
example, was older ! It could, however, be very an- 
cient ! — an equally good rendering of the Latin. 

(3) Hence the last clause of our quotation must 
mean that the faithful in all the world preserve the 
apostolic tradition pure precisely because they agree 
with Rome. But this, though a possible translation 
of the sentence, is unnatural. Heinrich gives as a 
further reason for the translation he prefers, 

(4) That the ground of the necessity of agreeing 
with the Roman Church is that she through the suc- 
cession of her bishops has preserved the apostolical 
tradition pure. But Irenaeus simply says that it is a 
fact that she has preserved the doctrine pure, for 
which he does not give the explanation of Heinrich. 
Of course, if it is pure, then it is, and all churches 
having pure doctrine zvill agree with it, or, if you 
choose to say so, mtist agree with it. But this is not 
to say what Heinrich and the Roman Church say. 

§ 31. The next author quoted is Tertullian. The 
passage is : *' Come, now, you who would indulge a 
better curiosity, if you would apply it to the business 
of your salvation, run over the apostolic churches, 
in which the very thrones {cathedrcE) of the apostles 
are still preeminent in their places, in which their 
own authentic writings are read, uttering the voice 
and representing the face of each of them severally. 
Is Achaia nearest you ? You have Corinth. If you 
are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you 
have the Thessalonians. If you are able to go to 
Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you are near Italy, 



TerttilUan, 53 

you have Rome/ whence also our authority is de- 
rived. How happy is its church on which apostles 
poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood ! 
where Peter endured a passion like his Lord's ! 
where Paul wins his crown in a death like John's ! 
where the apostle John was first plunged unhurt into 
boihng oil and thence remitted to his island exile ! 
See what she has learned, what taught, what fellow- 
ship has had with even (our) churches in Africa." 

§ 32. Now, evidently, Tertullian is citing the faith 
of Rome as a witness to the universal Christian faith, 
in exactly the same spirit and with the same purpose 
as Irenaeus. Far from making Rome superior to 
the other apostolic churches, he puts her quite upon 
a level with them. Heinrich's argument is so interest- 
ing as a specimen of the common historical reason- 
ing of Catholics that it is worth quoting. '' The propo- 
sition of Tertullian's that agreement with the apos- 
tolic original and mother churches is the criterion 
of the true faith, speaks with double weight for the 
necessity of agreement with the Roman Church, 
which is not only the mother church for most of the 

1 This translation of the Latin agrees with Heinrich's understand- 
ing, and is the more Uteral. Rome was the mother church of Africa, 
and the authority of the African churches was, in this sense, derived 
from Rome. Dr. Holmes, in the translation in the Ante-Xicene Lib- 
rary, renders it: " from which there comes even into our own hands 
the very authority (of the apostles themselves)." This is quite possi- 
bly correct, and makes a smoother and closer connection with the 
context. The passage is from the treatise De PrcBscriptione, chap, 
xxxvi., and the vital part runs in the Latin thus : " Si autem ItalicB ad- 
jaces, habes Romam, tinde nobis quo que auctoritas prcesto est. Ista quam 
felix ecclesia, cui totain doct?'i?iam ApostoU cum sanguine suo profude- 
runt.iibi Petrus passionidominiccB adequatur . . . Videamus quid dixerit, 
quid cum Africanis qzioque ecclesiis contesserarit." 



54 The Roman System. 

churches of the West and especially of Africa, be- 
cause they sprung from her, but zvhich possesses also 
the primacy over all the chiu^ches of the worlds It 
will be noticed that this is the very point to be 
proved by the historical argument, and that it is 
lugged in, being really an assumption which has 
nothing to do with the passage from TertuUian. 
Heinrich seems to feel this, for he continues : " To 
be sure, TertuUian has not stated this with the same 
clearness as Irenaeus, since the passage ('you have 
Rome/ etc.) where he appeals to the agreement of 
the African churches with Rome and to the author- 
ity of the Romish Church, may possibly, though not 
in the meaning of TertuUian, be limited simply to 
the dignity of Rome as the mother church of Africa. 
When later TertuUian, as a Montanist, with the bit- 
terness of a heretic, says in mockery, that the 
^ pout if ex uiaxiimis' — that is, the bishop of bishops — 
has issued a ' peremptory edict ' granting forgiveness 
to the unchaste after penance, this is an irrefutable 
proof that at that time the Catholic world believed, 
even though TertuUian did not, that the pope was 
bishop of bishops, and qualified to make final de- 
cisions." He also says that the " even " in the sen- 
tence, " What fellowship has had with even our 
churches in Africa," implies the unique position of 
Rome among churches, whose fellowship reached 
"even" to remote Africa, and so everywhere. 

This effort to turn the scornful sarcasm of Tertul- 
lian into an admission of a generally acknowledged 
right will have to be judged a failure in view of the 
historical fact. It is true that such titles as '' uni- 



Historical Method, 55 

versal bishop " began to be applied in the fifth c-en- 
tury, two hundred years af:er TertulHan's day, but 
it was to all the patriarchs, not to him of Rome 
alone. In the West the titles of '' papa " (pope), 
'' apostoHcus," vicar of Christ, chief pontiff, apostoHc 
see, were employed of other bishops and their sees 
in the same century. One letter of Leo I.'s runs in 
the editions : '' Leo, Bishop of Rome and of the uni- 
versal and CathoHc Church, to Leo, ever august, 
greeting." But the MSS. read only : '' Leo Bishop 
to Leo August." Gregory I. (590-604), when repel- 
ling the claim of the bishop of Constantinople to the 
title *^ universal patriarch," said that no one had 
ever wislied to be called by such a word, no one had 
ever arrogated to himself this " rash name." ^ Noth- 
ing can be clearer than that in Tertullian's time no 
such position of the Roman bishop was acknowl- 
edged by anybody. Undoubtedly it was the arro- 
gance of the tone of the Roman bishop, a fault which 
has always attached to that chair, which led Tertul- 
lian to apply to him not only the unheard-of, heathen 
epithet oi pontifex maximus, but the equally unheard- 
of invention, bishop of bishops. 

§ 33. The defects of the historical method em- 
ployed in respect to these passages by Heinrich 
require notice, for they constitute themselves an 
argument against the correctness of his results. 
The authors quoted do not sustain the points made, 
as Heinrich himself seems almost to see, but the 

* The full facts, with abundant quotations and references, are to be 
found in Gieseler, Kirchejigeschichte, vol. i., J 93, note 20; ^ 94, note 
72 ; ^ 117, note 31. 



56 The Roman System. 

point to be proved in Tertullian is introduced by a 
declaration of Tertullian's ''meaning," or by the 
creation of an atmosphere about him which had no 
actual existence. Perrone ( § 9, above) quotes pas- 
sages which not only do not prove the point made, 
but sometimes leave it altogether unmentioned. 
Such phenomena are as perplexing as they are sur- 
prising to the Protestant reader, and he is irresistibly 
led to the inquiry how such errors of historical cita- 
tion and how such a failure to discriminate between 
the point to be proved from an historical writer and 
the materials of the proof, can have arisen. Modern 
Protestant historical scholarship has emphasized 
most strongly the necessity of putting one's self in 
historical study at the standpoint occupied by the 
writer studied. His environment is carefully studied, 
and he is interpreted in accordance with this. Ideas 
are not attributed to him which he does not utter, and 
institutions are not introduced to explain his more 
obscure utterances which do not belong in any sense 
to his day. Thus the student of history takes the 
history as it comes, and interprets each period by the 
past, which could be known to any given writer, not 
by the future, which lay beyond his ken as it does 
beyond ours. But the Roman method is the 
exact reverse of this. The end of the process is 
used as a means of interpreting the beginning. The 
complete system of the Church is identified with its 
rudiments. Every feature of its present doctrine is 
supposed either to exist in the early Church exactly 
as it does to-day — the standard conception — or to 
have existed there in substance, requiring only devel- 



Dogma determi7tes History, 57 

opment along straight lines to produce the present — 
a concession to modern methods. The theory of de- 
velopment is especially championed by Cardinal New- 
man, though evidently it is regarded askance by many 
Roman controversialists as itself bordering upon 
heresy. Thus Perrone sees in the mere mention of 
Peter in connection with Mark by one writer a proof 
that that writer connected both Peter and Mark with 
Rome, because another writer who associates the 
two does definitely make such a connection ; and the 
reason for this is that he starts out with the original 
conviction that Peter was at Rome. But was he at 
Rome ? That is the very question ; and Perrone has 
decided it before he has begun his investigation. 
Heinrich says plainly, in reference to the question of 
papal infallibility, that the cases of fallibility some- 
times quoted are " false and ungrounded." '' This is 
for the believer fi^om the first \i. ^., before inquiry] 
certain with the certainty of the faith. . . . To submit 
the decision up 071 papal iitfallibility to historical science 
is the utter deitial of the infallibility of the Church and 
of the entire supernattiral order ^ pure naturalism aitd 
rationalism^ ^ He does not reflect that facts are a 
part of the groundwork upon which any properly 
established doctrine must stand. Hence the prevalent 
Roman indifference to facts, and to historical criticism 
in general. The historical conclusion is determined 
beforehand by the dogmatics of the Church. Now, 
this is the destruction of history. It renders all the 
appeal of Rome to the teachings of the fathers essen- 
tially empty. Catholics found their doctrine pro- 

^ op. cit., vol. ii., p. 421. 



58 The Roman System, 

fessedly upon tradition ; but they handle the tradi- 
tion in such a way as to make it teach the final result, 
whether or no. This is to found the result upon the 
result alone. Or, it is a pure begging of the question 
from the start. The consequences for the system 
and for the literary conscience are most lamentable. 
This entirely uncritical treatment of history has 
so confirmed Catholic teachers in their errors that 
they now hold with a good conscience what has no 
support in fact, and quote for it passages which do 
not teach it, or which teach something quite different 
from it, and repeat these errors from generation to 
generation. There is a moral here for Protestants 
also, who fall too often into the errors of this a priori 
method. It is perilous to assume that one knows 
the facts before they have been examined. 

§ 34. The defects of the Roman method with his- 
tory are strikingly brought out in the next series of 
citations made by Heinrich in support of papal infal- 
libility.^ It is from Cyprian. Heinrich says : Accord- 
ing to Cyprian, '* the unity of the entire Church and 
of her episcopate consists in the unity and agree- 
ment of all bishops, and thereby of all churches, 
with the pope or with the Roman Church." For 
this assertion he quotes Cyprian ^ as follows : " Which 
unity we ought firmly to hold and assert, especially 
we bishops, who preside in the Church, that we may 
prove the episcopate itself also one and undivided. 
. . . The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by 

^ In this passage I have taken Heinrich's argument as it is found 
scattered through his volumes and indicated by the cross references 
given by him. ^ Ti'eatise upon Unity, chap. v. 



Cyprian on Authority. 59 

each one for the whole." How, in any way, does this 
passage favor Heinrich's contention ? The last clause 
is against it, rather than for it. If a ''part " is held by 
" each one " for the whole, how has the Roman bishop 
any supremacy ? In fact, Heinrich does not venture to 
rely upon the passage as it stands, but reenforces 
it by quotations from the preceding chapter of the 
same treatise. He says : " This unity is original, and 
of divine institution, for, not merely to manifest, but 
to establish, effect, and always maintain the unity of 
the Church, (i) Christ originally made Peter the 
foundation, head, and shepherd of the Church, to 
whom the apostles and their successors the bishops 
are subordinated. (2) But Peter survives in Rome 
through his successors, and consequently (3) the 
Roman Church is the root and mother of the Cath- 
olic Church, from which (4) all churches proceed as 
branches from one root," etc. The quotation for the 
head marked (i) is from Epistle Ixix. 3: ''This 
Church founded by Christ the Lord upon Peter, by 
a source and principle of unity, is one also," etc. 
This is not proof of the proposition, but, as will be 
seen, looks quite in the other direction. Heinrich 
therefore supports it by quotations from On Unity ^ 
4, which, departing from Heinrich's order, we shall 
quote continuously. Cyprian says, according to 
Heinrich : '' The Lord speaks to Peter, saying, * I say 
unto thee, that thou art Peter ; and upon this rock 
I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in 



6o The Roman System. 

heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.' And again to the same he 
says after Ids j^esiirrection, ' Feed my sheep! Upon him 
being one he bnilds his CJinrcli and commits Ids sheep 
to be fed. And although to all the apostles, after 
his resurrection, he gives his equal power, and says, 
* As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you : 
Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye 
remit, they shall be remitted unto him ; and whose 
soever sins ye retain, they shall be retained ; ' yet, 
that he might manifest unity, he established one cathe- 
dra, and arranged by his authority the origin of 
that unity, as beginning from one. Assuredly the 
rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, 
endowed with a like partnership both of honor and 
power ; but the beginning proceeds from unity. . . . 
Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church 
think that he holds the faith ? Does he who strives 
against and resists the Church, zvho deserts the chair 
of Peter, npon ivhom the Church is founded, trust 
that he is in the Church ?" etc. Now, evidently, all 
the authority for the proposition which is to be sup- 
ported by this passage is contained in those portions 
of it which are italicized. Omit these, and the rest 
of the apostles are " the same as was Peter." How 
great will be the surprise of the ingenuous reader to 
learn that these pivotal passages are all interpolations ! 
The learned Etienne Baluze, himself an ecclesiastic 
of the Roman Church, prepared shortly before his 
death an edition of Cyprian, from twenty-five MSS., 
and pronounced these passages and some others 
spurious. The work was published posthumously, 



Cyprian on Authority. 6i 

and was not printed entirely as Baluze would have 
had it. But these passages have long been known 
as spurious, as indeed would be evident from their 
entire inconsistency with Cyprian's position as shown 
elsewhere. Heinrich himself acknowledges that the 
last passage may be an " old gloss," though he 
thinks it is not. 

For the head (2), Heinrich cites a legate at the 
Council of Ephesus (431), a letter of Chrysologus 
(449), and a remark of Leo the Great's (died 460). 
What bearing have these upon Cyprian's views, who 
died in 258 ? 

The head (3) is sustained by quoting Epistle xliv. : 
" We have exhorted them to acknowledge and hold 
the root and matrix of the CathoHc Church," which 
root and matrix are in Cyprian's thought the episco- 
pate, not Rome ; and Ep. Ixxiii., which merely styles 
the Church, in a universal sense, not in the sense of 
the Church of Rome, '' mother." 

Head (4) is maintained by quoting On Unity, 
5, beginning at ''The Church is also one, which is 
spread abroad far and wide," etc. The reference is 
indisputably to the general Church, not to the church 
at Rome at all. The immediate context speaks of its 
plurality of bishops, which cannot refer to the single 
church at Rome. 

Heinrich now proceeds with his argument from the 
point where our last quotation closed. Agreement 
with the successor of Peter must, in Cyprian's mind, 
be "just as essentially, and before all, an agreement 
in faith!' To support this he quotes from Epistle 
liv, : '' For neither have heresies arisen, nor have 



62 The Roman System. 

schisms originated, from any other source than this, 
that God's priest^ is not obeyed; nor do they con- 
sider that there is one person for the time priest in 
the church, and for the time judge in the stead of 
Christ." This sounds very pat ; but when we read 
the context we find that Cyprian is speaking of the 
local church, Hke that of Carthage, for he says, if they 
did consider what he has just rehearsed, "no one 
after the divine judgment, after the suffrage of the 
people, after the consent of the co-bishops, would 
make himself a judge, not now of the bishop, but 
of God." The bishop of Rome, in Heinrich's sense, 
had no *' co-bishops." Cyprian means that every 
bishop is a supreme court for his own church from 
which there is no appeal. It is as when he says in 
his address at the Council of Carthage, *' No bishop 
can be judged by another, nor himself judge an- 
other." Heinrich supports himself farther by a quo- 
tation from Epistle xlv., a remark approved by Cor- 
nelius, bishop of Rome, that '* in the Cathohc 
Church there ought to be one bishops But the 
preferred text is cpiscopatum, " bishopric," not epis- 
copiim, *' bishop ; " and even if it did read one '' bish- 
op," instead of one '' episcopate," the context would 
surely fix the meaning, one bishop in one church. 

Hence Heinrich comes to his conclusion, that 
Cyprian recognized the official infallibility of the 
pope as teacher of the Church, though, after our 
review of his evidence, we shall entirely refuse to 
draw this conclusion with him. 

^ It may be said in passing that the phrase " God's priest" is corn- 
mon in Cyprian in the serise of bishop. 



Cyprian' s True Position, 63 

§ 35. In opposition to all this dogmatic and false 
interpretation of the great Carthaginian, it may be 
well briefly to state Cyprian's real position, and to 
refer to the most striking passages in proof of it. 
He held that our Lord founded the Church upon 
Peter in the sense that he made the unity of his 
Church to begin with him.^ But he was a head over 
associates, the apostles, who were all equal.^ Their 
successors are the bishops, who are also equal and 
independent,^ but who maintain the unity of the 
Church in maintaining the unity of the episcopate,^ 
so that the unity of the Church resides in their 
unity .^ This single episcopate, of which each bishop 
has a share,^ is the representative to Cyprian of the 

1 Almost all these positions will be found taken in the long passage 
quoted above from On Unity, chap. 4, and that from chap. 5. For the 
first point, see the passage which shows what the primacy of Peter 
was, and what is meant by " origin " as applied to unity by Cyprian, 
Epistle Ixx. : " For neither did Peter, whom the Lord first chose, and 
upon whom he built his Church, when Paul disputed with him after- 
ward about circumcision, claim anything to himself insolently, nor 
arrogantly assume anything ; so as to say that he held the primacy, and 
that he ought rather to be obeyed by novices and those lately co7ne." 
He was primate in the sense that he held a temporary leadership. 

2 See citation above from On Unity, 4. 

3 In addition to the above, Epistle Ixxi., " Each prelate has in the 
administration of the Church the exercise of his will free, as he shall 
give an account of his conduct to the Lord " — not the pope. So also 
Epistle li. 21. 

* Besides what is above quoted from On Unity, 5, see Epistle Ixix. 3, 
"Wherefore we who are with the Lord, and maintain the unity of tfie 
Lord, and according to his condescension adininister his priesthood in 
the Church," etc. 

5 See also Epistle li. 24, " One episcopate diffused through a harmo- 
nious multitude of many bishops." 

6 See the previous note, and On Unity, 5, " The episcopate is one, 
of which a part is held by each one for the whole," 



64 The Roman System. 

chair of Peter/ and is his proper successor. Other 
than this, he has no Hving successor. 

§ 36. It is not necessary to follow Heinrich's argu- 
ment farther into the later church writers. It may 
be freely admitted that during the entire history of 
the Church from the Council of Nice to the Vatican 
Council, there was a great deal of unanimity upon 
the general doctrine that the Church is in some way 
infallible. But there was no such agreement, as 
Heinrich would make out, that the organ of that 
infallibility is the pope. The ideal already sketched 
held sway over the minds of churchmen, but how to 
express it was not so well understood. The success 
of the Council of Nice caused it to have among later 
generations a degree of influence and dignity which 
its own character and history did not justify. All 
the early councils gradually attained the character 
of infallibility in the eyes of the Church through 
that natural process by which the human mind ever 
exalts and reveres that which is ancient. But the his- 
tory of the Middle Ages, with its record of gross cor- 
ruptions in the see of Rome, made necessary a modi- 
fication of the doctrine, and Antoninus of Florence 
taught that the Church can never be without the 
truth, though it may continue to exist only in a 
single person — a position far below the Protestant. 
The experiences of the great schism led to the 
formation of the doctrine, under the lead of the Uni- 

^ See Epistle xxvi. i, "The Church is founded upon the bishops." 
And Epistle xxxix. 5, " There is one God, and Christ is one, and one 
chair {cathedra) founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord," 



Infallibility unknown to Antiquity, 65 

versity of Paris, that a general council cannot err, and 
is therefore the proper judge of the pope. 

But however it may stand with later times, the 
failure to make out a doctrine of papal infallibility 
in the earliest fathers is fatal to the Roman claim 
that Peter was installed by Christ as head and infal- 
lible teacher of the Church, and that he has always 
been acknowledged by true behevers as such. The 
testimonies of the later writers mentioned by Hein- 
rich and other controversiaHsts, Ambrose, Jerome, 
Augustine,^ Origen, Chrysostom, etc., we may there- 
fore pass over without notice. Neither shall we 
linger over the proof drawn from the utterances of 
the popes themselves. At subsequent points it will 
be impossible to avoid noticing many of the defini- 
tions of the popes upon doctrine, and then the sub- 
ject will necessarily recur. Heinrich closes his 
argument with the assertion that infallibility is a 
fact. We take issue with him here. It will not be 
enough to bring proofs from a Protestant standpoint 
that the popes have actually erred, but the effort 
must be made to show that, upon the premises which 
the Roman Church itself sets up, the infallibility of 
the pope can be refuted by an example of fallibility. 
We take the most patent case of this, the case of 
Honorius, who was pope 625-638 a. d. 

^ Augustine is constantly quoted as having said : " Rome has spoken ; 
the cause is ended" {Ro7na locuta est, causa finita est). There is no 
such passage. The nearest approach is this (Serm. cxxxi., Nicene a7jd 
P.-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. vi., p. 504): "Already have two 
councils on this question been sent to the apostolic see ; and rescripts 
also have come from thence. The question has been brought to an 
issue ; would that their error may some time be brought to an issue, 
tool" 



66 The Roman System, 

§ 37. The Case of Honorius. To a full under- 
standing of the matter it will be necessary to review 
the preceding history somewhat. Long before the 
time of Honorius a considerable portion of the 
Church had separated, under the general designation 
of Monophysites, from the Cathohc communion. 
This was the case especially in Egypt and Armenia. 
Heraclius, Roman emperor, thought that he dis- 
covered, upon a journey in Armenia and Syria about 
622, that the principal difficulty with the sect was 
the conclusions they drew from the Catholic expres- 
sions as to two sorts of voluntary activities in Christ, 
which they conceived to destroy the unity of his per- 
son. In his anxiety to reconcile these separated 
communities with the Catholic Church, and thus to 
strengthen the weakened and tottering empire, Her- 
aclius interpellated Sergius, Patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, v/ho said that the doctrine of one activity of 
the will and one volitional energy would not contra- 
dict the symbols of the Church ; and accordingly 
Heraclius began to favor this phraseology. Cyrus, 
who had meantime become bishop of Alexandria, 
secured in 633 the reunion of a large number of 
Monophysites with the Catholic Church by means 
of a formula in which, among other expressions, this 
was used, " one theandric energy." Sophronius, a 
priest in Alexandria, who afterwards became bishop 
of Jerusalem, opposed this phrase, and Sergius was 
obliged to advise him to keep the peace. Having 
written to Honorius, Sergius not only obtained 
acquiescence in the advice given, but also in the doc- 
trine which he had advanced in his letter to Hono- 



Honorius ; Sergius* Letter. 67 

rius. Long afterwards, the Council of Constantinople 
of the year 681 met, and upon the basis of this reply 
of Honorius to Sergius pronounced Honorius a here- 
tic and anathematized him. Leo H. (pope 682-683) 
confirmed this anathema. It was also incorporated 
into the Roman oath of office, and was thus repeated 
by all bishops upon their consecration, for an indefi- 
nite period thereafter. 

§ 38. Our interest gathers now about the letter 
of Sergius to Honorius and his reply. As that let- 
ter expresses Sergius' new notions, and thus sets 
forth the very doctrine which was condemned as 
monothelitism, and as the council declared in its re- 
sult that Honorius agreed in his reply with the let- 
ter, and was therefore a heretic, the real truth as to 
this reply is of crucial importance. 

Sergius is engaged in defining the phrase employed 
by Cyrus of Alexandria, *^ one theandric energy." 
He prefers, therefore, not to speak of one or of two 
operations,^ but insists upon the fact that the only 
begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, one and the 
same, very God, operates in both human and divine 
operations. He says, further, that " the phrase ' two 
operations' scandalizes many;" and that ''this brings 
in two persons willing opposite things, which is im- 
pious." Thus, in his mind, two operatio7is lead to two 
opposing wills ^ and these to tzvo opposing persons^ thus 
destroying the unity of the person of Christ. To 
avoid, therefore, opposing zvills, Sergius thought that 

^ See Gieseler, Kirchengeschlchte, Bd. L, Abth. II., p. 470 ff., for a 
view of the whole controversy, with sufficient citations from the 
sources. 



68 The Roman System, 

there must be only 07ie will, since the idea of two 
wills in harmony with one another did not seem to 
him a possible idea. He says that even Nestorius, 
who made tw^o Sons by separating the natures in 
Christ, did not teach tw^o wills, but '* identity " of 
will 'I and therefore it is impossible that the ortho- 
dox should teach '' two and these opposed wills." ^^ 
" Whence," he goes on to say, '' we confess one will 
of our Lord Jesus Christ .... since the humanity 
with its rational soul never determined itself separately 
and out of its own will, in opposition to the spirit of 
the divine Logos hypostatically united with it, but 
always willed when, and as, and as much as, the 
divine Logos." That is, one will because there is 
harmony: tivo wills would lead to disharmony. This, 
in a nutshell, is the heresy of monothelitism. 

§ 39. A minute examination of Honorius' reply ^ 
renders it evident that the council of 68 1 was right, 
and that Honorius agreed wdth Sergius in this doc- 
trine, and that he accepted the grounds upon w^hich 
it was based. To be sure, he thinks that the whole 
question of one or two operations ought to be re- 
ferred to the grammarians as mere child's play, but 
he agrees in the policy of avoiding discussions about 
" one or twin operations." He also takes up the 
expression that the one Lord Jesus Christ performed 
things divine and human as ''one operator;" and 

^ In the " Ekthesis," put out in 638, which agrees in substance, and 
often at great length verbally, with the letter. The word employed is 
TavTo/SovAia. 

-^ Greek, hvo /cal TaOra kvavTia OcXijfiara. 

3 There are two letters preserved, to be found in Migne's Patrologia 
t>atina^ vol. 80, 



Honorius^ Reply, 69 

then he goes on, with the same dependence upon 
Sergius which these expressions indicate, to say:^ 
" Whence also we confess one will of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, because certainly our nature was assumed by 
Divinity, not our faulty that nature, namely, which 
was created before sin, not that which was vitiated 
after the fall." The idea here is evidently this, that 
if a human will had been assumed it would have 
been a sinful will, and hence there was assumed only 
the nature, and there is with it but one will, that is 
the divine. Honorius says below : " For there was 
no other law in the members, or differing will." He 
also says that the text John vi. 38 — '' not my own 
will, but the will of him that sent me " — does not 
prove a " diverse will," implying that a second will 
would necessarily be diverse, whereas the council 
quotes the passage to prove that Christ did have a 
human will. All this rests upon exactly the same 
thought as Sergius' ''one willy' and hence it is the 
same thing. As that was monothelitism, so is this. 
In fact, so firmly was the idea of Sergius, whereby 
two wills were conceived to involve necessary oppo- 
sition, rooted in the whole dispute, that the council 
was obliged to teach not only two operations and 
two wills, but also "two natural wills not opposed."^ 
Honorius was therefore guilty of making an heretical 
utterance upon this occasion. 

§ 40. But up to this point the infallibility of the 
papal chair is not necessarily impugned. Was Hon- 
orius, when making this error, speaking ex cathedra ? 

1 Migne, vol. cit., p. 472 A. 

2 5vo d>V(Tt,Ka. OeXriixaTa o v x VTrevavrCa, 



70 The Roma7t System. 

If not, he may still have been infallible when thus 
speaking, though fallible on this particular occa- 
sion. 

According to the definitions of cathedratic decisions 
already given (§ 19), any decision is such which is 
intended to teach a doctrine to be held by the Church, 
whatever its outward form. Now we say, upon the 
presuppositions ot Romanists about the authority of 
the papacy, Honorius most indisputably did, in this 
case, intend to direct Sergius, and through him, as 
the patriarch of Constantinople, the whole Church. 
He says : " These things [viz., the definitions 
we have just rehearsed] let your Fraternity 
preach with us." ^ This is equivalent to a com- 
mand. It expresses design on Honorius' part to 
teach the defined doctrine as fully as any expression 
can ; and it therefore carries with it the command to 
all the Church to preach, and a fortiori to believe, 
the same doctrine. In the second letter which he 
wrote to Sergius he says in the same connection as 
the last-quoted sentence : " But as concerns ecclesiasti- 
cal dogma ^ we ought to confess I' etc. This 

defines ^^ dogma " as something which ought to be 
confessed ; and the definition of dogma is cathe- 
dratic. 

We say, therefore, as the sum total of this inves- 
tigation, that Pope Honorius was, upon the authority 
of an ecumenical council, and the approval of an- 
other pope, declared to be a heretic in a cathedratic 
decision. He was therefore not infallible. And 
with this one instance the whole edifice of papal 

1 Migne, Pat, Lat., 80, p. 474 B. 



Honoritis^ Reply. 71 

infallibility falls,^ for if any pope is infallible, all must 
be, and if any one is not infallible, none is. 

§ 41. The case of Honorius has naturally attracted 
much attention from Roman Catholic apologists. 
Their defenses form an interesting commentary upon 
each other. Platina said Honorius brought the 
matter of the monothelite heresy before the emperor 
and urged him to banish the heretics, which he did ! 
Two apologists say that the historical sources are in 
a corrupt state, Baronius suggesting that Theodorus 
ought to be read in the papers of the Sixth Council 
in place of Honorius, and Bellarmine that the letters 
of Honorius are either interpolated or corrupted. 
Pagi, Garnier, and the Ballerini, and now Heinrich, 
say that Honorius was condemned for negligence 
and not for heresy. And Heinrich and Ryder say 
that the letters, whose orthodoxy the great and acute 
Bellarmine could rescue only upon the supposition 
that, as they stand, they are in a corrupt condition, 
are perfectly orthodox, and need no rectification ! 
Heinrich shows that he does not understand the 
controversy by the remark that Honorius taught that 
there was one will in the sense of one harmonious 
will, the human will existing side by side with the 
divine, but in perfect agreement with it. But he for- 
gets the argument of Sergius against two wills, in 
which Honorius accords. We may safely leave these 
various apologists to agree among themselves before 

1 So on the principles of Cardinal Gibbons (F. F., p. 95) : " If only 
one instance could be given in which the Church ceased to teach a 
doctrine of faith which had been previously held, that single instance 
would be the death-blow of her claim to infallibility," 



^2 The Roman System. 

we accept any one of their explanations against the 
plain facts. 

§ 42. Summary. The refutation of the infallibility 
of the pope is, of course, by no means yet complete. 
Its complete refutation is nothing less than the whole 
discussion of the dogmas of Rome. This system rests 
now, since the Vatican Council, substantially upon 
the doctrine of papal infallibility ; and if the system 
is wrong, as we shall attempt to show, the infallibility 
which gives it authority is without support. Yet 
enough has now been said to show that the doctrine 
is without adequate proof The Scriptures have been 
shown not to support it, but rather to oppose it. 
There is no necessity in the nature of the case for it. 
The early Church knew nothing of such a doctrine, 
which ignorance, since it is inexplicable if the doc- 
trine formed any part of original Christianity, dis- 
proves it. And in the case of one pope at least we 
have a glaring example of actual papal fallibility. 
We must therefore reject the doctrine ; and in its 
fall it carries with it other doctrines. The identifi- 
cation of the visible Roman Church with the true 
Church of Christ upon earth rests upon the authority 
of the Church, and ultimately of the pope, in matters 
of doctrine (§ 5). It therefore falls. The apostolicity, 
catholicity, holiness, and unity of the Roman Church 
fall Hkewise. The whole foundation for the subse- 
quent argumentation of the Roman apologist is swept 
away. As we pass on, we shall find how entirely 
this is so. as well as how completely the subsequent 
refutation of the system sustains the positions already 
made against it 



Protestant Certainty. 73 

But, now, has the Protestant, in rejecting the 
infallible teaching office of the Church, lost all 
certainty in religion, as the Catholic will begin to / 
think ? No ! For in place of the outward certainty' 
which an infallible church might offer, he has an 
inward certainty of the heart, a knowledge springing 
out of personal experience, and hence peculiar to 
himself and possessing the immediate certainty which 
only that can possess which has become a portion 
of the life. The true Christian is born again by the 
Holy Spirit. In this most fundamental experience 
the soul comes in contact with God. It surrenders 
itself to God, and finds itself at peace in belief in him. 
It is assured of his love. By knowing what God 
does for itself, it comes to have a knowledge of what 
he will do for the sinful world. It finds him in the 
pages of his word, also, and the Bible is evidenced 
to the believer as the word of God. And thus, in a 
variety of ways, a wide range of Christian truth be- 
comes certain to the mind of the regenerated man. 
His inward certainty is more for him than any out- 
ward certainty without it could be. 

But, rejoins the Roman CathoHc, is not all this fa- 
tally open to the charge of subjectiveness ? May not 
all these '' inward " experiences be self-deception ? 
They certainly might, if they were isolated and singu- 
lar, known and received only in one soul. But they 
are the common experiences of God's people. They 
are found in saints of the Catholic Church, such as 
Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and others whose 
pages Protestants delight to read, and in whose 
writings they find a spirit akin to their own. In fact, 



74 1^^^ Roman System, 

it is only as Catholics have inward experience of the 
love of God in personal salvation that their " objec- 
tive " certainty becomes of any value to them. They 
must possess the receptive organ. That organ is 
faith, inner certainty, spiritual experience. This 
Protestants know themselves to have ; and having 
this they can dispense with the outward certainty of 
an infallible teaching Church, w^hich has lost all 
certainty for them, since they cannot find reason for 
believing in its asserted authority. 



/ 



CHAPTER III. 

THE NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 

§ 43. It is the doctrine of the Roman Cathohc 
Church that membership in the same is essential to 
eternal salvation. True, there are some qualifica- 
tions to this statement, which it will be our object in 
due time to consider, and to which we desire to pay 
proper attention ; but aside from these, the doctrine 
is that without the pale of the Roman Church there 
is no salvation. It is a logical deduction from the 
fundamental position of that Church, that the visible 
Church is the true Church, and that the Roman 
Church is that visible Church. Evidently none can 
be saved except such as belong to the true (invisible) 
Church, since that is the congregation of believers, 
and it is the position of Catholic and Protestant ahke 
that none but believers are saved. If, then, the in- 
visible Church is to be identified with the visible 
Roman Church, membership in the former is the 
same as membership in the latter, and salvation will 
depend upon connection with the Roman Church. 
This principle is the result of a long and gradual 
growth, and is a fundamental presupposition run- 
ning through the whole system, now receiving inci- 
dentally an open expression, now only implied, 
rather than a formulated dogma ; but, whatever may 
be true of its origin or its form, it is nevertheless the 
constantly dominating presupposition of doctrine 

75 



76 The Roman System, 

and practice. It excludes all outside the pale of 
Rome, Protestants and heathen, as well as atheists 
and infidels, from the benefits of salvation. 

§ 44. Proof that this is the Doctrine of the 
Roman Church. So offensive is this doctrine to" the 
outside world that it has been repeatedly denied, espe- 
cially in America, or, where it has not been denied, the 
exceptions which are maintained have been so extended 
as practically to nullify the doctrine. Protestant 
writers who seek to allay antagonism between Prot- 
testants and Catholics for the sake of bringing about 
greater cooperation between them, if not of helping 
on the final consummation when there shall be actual 
union between the different portions of the great host 
of those who call themselves Christians, have also 
sometimes denied that it is a Roman Catholic doc- 
trine. It will be necessary, therefore, instead of the 
usual definition of the doctrine which this is the place 
to introduce, but which in this case is hardly re- 
quired, to set forth the reasons why the doctrine 
must be held to be a part of the Roman system. 

The noted bull of Boniface VIII., styled Unam 
Sanctam (1302), has the following passage: The 
holy Roman Church " firmly believes, professes, and 
preaches that none who are not found within the 
Catholic Church, not only pagans, but not even 
Jews or heretics and schismatics, can become par- 
takers of eternal Hfe, but shall go into eternal fire 
which is prepared for the devil and his angels, except 
they shall have been gathered to the same before 
the end of life : and that the unity of the ecclesiastical 
body is of so much importance that only to those 



The Bull^ Unam Sanctam, 'j'j 

who remain in it are the ecclesiastical sacraments 
and fasts profitable, the alms and other offices of 
piety and exercises of Christian service productive 
of eternal rewards, and that no one, however great 
alms he shall have done, eve?i if he shall have shed 
his blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, except 
he shall have remained in the bosom and unity of 
the CathoHc Church." ^ It is in the same bull that 
we read, in reference now to the temporal power of 
the pope, but by parity of reasoning the passage 
applies with equal force to the point now before us : 
" Moreover, we declare, say, define, and pronounce 
that it is altogether necessary to the salvation of every 
human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff!' ^ 

Now, this bull, certainly the last-quoted clause of 
it, according to the criteria which Heinrich has given 
us (§ 19), is cathedratic, for the pope '* defines, de- 
clares, and pronounces."^ And it would seem 
equally evident that the longer passage was a defini- 
tion of the CathoHc faith, and §0 cathedratic. We 
shall take it so without fear of successful contradic- 
tion, and shall say that, upon the supposition of 
papal infallibility, the position that this is a doctrine 
of the Church is fully sustained. 

But there are other proofs. The bull Pastor 

^ From the Latin as quoted by Delitzsch, Lehr system d. r'om. Kirche, 
1875, P- 70. where this topic is fully treated. 

2 " Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni hum,anoe creaturcB declara- 
m.us, dicimtis, dejinimus, et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate 
salutisy The political portion of the bull is pretty fully given in 
Gieseler, Kirchengesch., Bd. ii., Abth. ii., p. 203 (^ 59). 

3 So much is admitted by Bishop Fessler, in his Trtie and False 
InfalUbility of the Popes, says Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 13. 



y8 The Roman System, 

^ternus (-1516) says: "Obedience [viz., to the 
Roman see] is the sole mother and guard of all the 
virtues, alone possessing the merit of faith, without 
which any one is convicted of being an infidel, even 
though he may seem to be a believer."^ Without 
'* obedience," you are an infidel. Again, the Coun- 
cil of Trent, though it does not expressly define this 
doctrine, does use the expression, '' our Catholic 
faith, without which it is impossible to please God," ^ 
thus perverting a text of Scripture written in refer- 
ence to a spiritual act, to teach the necessity of intel- 
lectual belief in a system of ideas ; and it closes with 
pronouncing the anathema upon all heretics. Now, 
the anathema denotes, according to the decree of 
Gratian, " separation from God." Lest some may 
say that that document is old and does not represent 
modern Catholicism, hear the Catholic Dictionaiy : 
" In pronouncing anathema against willful heretics, 
the Church does but declare that they are excluded 
from her communion, and that they must, if they 
continue obstinate, perish eternally." In strict ac- 
cordance with this, the '' profession of the Tridentine 
Faith," taken by archbishops, bishops, etc., reads : 
'' I profess this true Catholic faith [viz., that of the 
Council of Trent, and now also of the Vatican Coun- 
cil,^ that the mass is a true sacrifice, purgatory, that 
the Roman Church is the mistress of all churches, 
infallibility, etc.], without which no one can be 

1 Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 70. Large extracts from the bull in 
Gieseler, loc. cit., p. 199. 

'-^ Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii., p. 83. 
3 Cath, Diet., art, " CreecJ," 



Further Authorities, 79 

saved." ^ That is, acceptance of the dogmatic system 
of the Church of Rome is necessary to salvation. 
The Roman catechism says ^ that '' the Church is 
styled catholic because all who wish to attain eternal 
salvation ought ^ to hold and embrace her just as those 
who entered into the ark that they might not perish 
in the flood." The bull In Ccena Domini {1610, 1627), 
though an administrative and not a cathedratic 
measure, exhibits the spirit and meaning of these 
definitions when it says : " We excommunicate and 
anathematize on the part of God Almighty^ Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, by the authority of the blessed 
apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own, all Hus- 
sites, Wiclifites, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, 
Huguenots, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, and apostates 
from the Christian faith, and all and every other 
heretic, by whatever name they are called ; . . . 
also schismatics and those zvho pertinaciously withdraw 
from the obedience of Us and of the Roman pontiff 
at the time existing." ^ 

Or to come down to more modern times, Pius IX. 
in his Allocution of Dec. 17, 1847, says : " Let there- 
fore those who wish to be saved come to the pillar 
and ground of the truth, which is the Church .... 



^ Schaff, Creeds, etc., ii., p. 210. 2 Pars. i. cap. x., quaest. xiii. 

^ Latin : debeant, which might be translated " must," as the Catholic 
German translation has it — " festhalten und umfassen mussen.'' The 
" ought" is not to be understood as meaning 07ight normally, though 
exceptionally they may fail to do so. It is a specimen of the traditional 
ambiguous, cumbersome, indirect, and evasive style of the Roman 
curia, of which many examples will meet us. It means " must." 

* Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 72. Large extr^acts in Gieseler, 
Kgsch,, Bd. iii., Abth. ii., p, 592, 



8o The Roman System, 

We . . shall spare no cares and labors to lead by the 
grace of Christ those who are ignorant and err to 
this sole way of truth." ^ Note that the " ignorant" 
need to come to the Church to be saved. The " Sylla- 
bus of Errors" (i864),which bears the mark of being an 
ex cathedra utterance, condemns the error that '' we 
may entertain at least a well-founded hope for the 
eternal salvation of all those who are in no manner 
in the true Church of Christ." And the Vatican 
Council (1870) ^closes its deliverances with suspending 
the anathema over all who '' presume to contradict 
this our definition," viz., that of the infallibility of the 
pope. Even the generally liberal, though firm 
Catholic, Mohler, said : '' Connection with Christ is 
also always at the same time connection with the 
Church, the inner union with him the union with his 
Church.^ 

§ 45. Proof of the Doctrine. The consistency 
of the Roman system so absolutely requires this 
doctrine that it is scarcely necessary to present further 
proofs of it to one who accepts the fundamental 
positions of Rome. But Perrone ^ quotes the follow- 
ing passages: Matt, xviii. 17, ''If he refuse to hear 
the Church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile 
and the publican," which refers, however, not to 
the doctrine, but to the discipline of the Church, and 
certainly falls far short of denying eternal salvation 
to the recalcitrant member; Luke x. 16, "He that 
rejecteth you rejecteth me ; and he that rejecteth me 
rejecteth him that sent me; " Mark xvi. 16, '' He that 

1 Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 74. '^ Schaff, Creeds, ii., p. 271. 

^ Symbolik, p. 335. * PrcelecHones, vol. i., p. 199. 



Proofs Offered. 8i 

disbelieveth shall be condemned," which cojztradicts 
the doctrine because it connects salvation with 
the only condition prescribed in the Scriptures, 
viz., faith; so John iii. i8; Titus iii. lo, ii, ''A 
man that is heretical after a first and second admo- 
nition refuse ; knowing that such a one is perverted, 
and sinneth, being self-condemned;" 2 Peter ii. i, 
^^ False teachers, who shall privily bring in destruc- 
tive heresies, denying even the Master that bought 
them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction ; '^ 
as also I John ii. i8, 19; 2 John 7, 8, 9 ; Jude 
13, 22. In respect to these last passages, no 
Protestant would deny that men may cherish opin- 
ions which bring with them eternal loss, because 
they are at the same time a willful forsaking of truth, 
and are essentially unbelief, or the refusal to submit 
to an authority which they after all acknowledge. 
But is there anything in Scripture to connect all this 
with those doctrines of Rome which she demands 
shall be believed, but which we shall find have no 
place in the Scriptures, the seven sacraments, good 
•works, the sacrifice of the mass, etc.? The whole 
connection of these texts with Rome is entirely want- 
ing, and thus the vital element in the proof is lacking. 
The proof from the fathers, in lack of any real per- 
tinence to the question, we shall omit. The early 
fathers were in no better — in fact, in a less favorable — 
position than we are to judge of the truth of this 
doctrine and its scripturalness. 

§ 46. Apologetic Modifications. In recent times, 
under the pressure of the opposition which this doc- 
trine receives from the more liberal spirit of the age, 

6 



82 The Roman System, 

there have been various apologetic attempts to remove 
the offense which it gives. Perrone adopts two 
methods/ He tells the Protestants that they ought 
not to object to it so much, since up to almost the 
present moment they have taught the same thing. 
There may have been isolated expressions which could 
be thus interpreted, or which were thus meant. Some 
bigots have thought that their own little sect alone 
opened the way of salvation. Even great commun- 
ions and very eminent men have thought that certain 
truths (which, for the most part, are common to both 
Catholics and Protestants) were so clearly proved 
and must carry such conviction to any candid mind 
that no one could deny them and maintain the right 
attitude toward God, and thus be a subject of salva- 
tion. But such has not been the general attitude of 
Protestants. Luther, it is true, following Roman 
Catholic ideas as to the means of grace, of which he 
was not able to rid himself, said that if Socrates, 
who never had the word and the sacraments, could 
be saved, then the gospel was nothing ; but he never 
taught that Roman Catholics, as such, would be lostf 
Zwingli thought that all good men, such as Socrates, 
Hercules, etc., would be found in some way in heaven, 
having been taught by God, from whom alone any- 
thing good can come forth. The whole drift of the Re- 
formed theology is to leave a place for the operation 
of the Spirit of God beyond the limits of the agency 
of the Church. The Spirit is not bound to the means 
of grace, although he usually employs them. 

Perrone's more earnest apologetic effort is, how- 

PrcBlectiones , vol. i., p. 198 seq. 



Apologetic Modifications, 83 

ever, in another line. It is suggested in the caption 
of his section upon this doctrine, which begins, 
" There can be no salvation for those culpably depart- 
ing from this life in heresy or schism or unbelief" 
Culpable heretics he styles " formal " heretics. Others 
are '' material " heretics, who, though they err in the 
matter of their beliefs, are not culpably in error. He 
goes on to define them thus : '^ Those who from 
infancy have been imbued with errors and prejudices, 
who have never had a suspicion that they were living 
in heresy or schism, or if a doubt arises in their 
minds, inquire after the truth with the whole heart 
and with a sincere mind. These we remit to the 
judgment of God, whose it is to examine and scruti- 
nize the thoughts and intents of the heart. For the 
goodness and clemency of God do not suffer any one 
to be adjudged to eternal tortures who is not guilty 
of a voluntary fault. To affirm the contrary zvould 
be against the express teaching of the Church!' For 
this he quotes not only Bajus (d. 1589), but also 
Augustine and '' the rest of the fathers " (a fact which 
we may well leave to him to reconcile with his quo- 
tation of many of them in favor of the exclusive- 
ness of the Church in the following paragraphs) and 
Thomas Aquinas, but not a pope or bull, or other 
official utterance of the Church. 

There is, however, one pope who might be quoted 
for this position, and he is Pius IX., who said in the 
Allocution of Dec. 9, 1854 : " It is to be held of faith 
that out of the apostolic Roman Church no one can 
be saved, that this is the sole ark of safety, that he 
who will not enter this shall perish in the flood ; b^it 



84 The Roman System, 

yet it is to be held equally certain that they who labor 
under ignorance of the true rehgion, if that is invin- 
cible, are laden with no sin on this account before 
the eyes of God." ^ Whether this allocution is to be 
held to be an ex cathedra declaration or not, may be 
left undecided, although the phrase twice employed, 
" is to be held," implies that it is. It has the distinc- 
tion of being the only papal utterance which accords 
with Perrone's positions. 

§ 47. But who are the '' invincibly ignorant " as to 
whom we may cherish this larger hope ? Certainly 
no Jew can be numbered among them, for, according 
to Boniface VIII., Jews cannot be saved unless they 
are " gathered to the Church before the end of life." 
Luther cannot have been so, for, though he was so 
firmly convinced of the errors of the Roman system 
that he ventured everything and risked even life itself 
to protest against those errors, he was excommuni- 
cated and died under excommunication. No Protes- 
tant can be among these, for " Lutherans, Zwinglians, 
Calvinists, Huguenots," etc., are all excommunicated 
by the bull In Ccena Domini, Invincible ignor- 
ance must be something especially peculiar, since it 
is not the same as mere igiiorance of any sort, for 
Pius IX., the same pope who held out this hope, 
himself said that he would spare no pains to bring 
back *' those who are ignorant and err to this sole 
way of truth " — the Roman Church ! Who are the 
invincibly ignorant? 

Bishop Conrad Martin seemed to see some light 
in this direction. " I am convinced," he says, '' in 

^ Latin in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 80. ■ 



The ^^ Invincibly Ignorant^ 85 

such entirely inculpable religious error no small num- 
ber among our Protestants of the present day are to be 
found ; the CathoHc truth has ever been presented 
to them in so distorted and repellant a manner, the 
Catholic Church ever in so monstrous deformity." 
And later : '' What do we understand by heresy ? 
Not every religious error, not even every culpable 
religious error, but that culpable religious error 
which a Christian obstinately maintains, and conse- 
quently against his better knowledge and conscience, 
so that he opposes the truth to its face." ^ But 
such men are not Christians. Indeed, it may be con- 
fidently declared that upo7i that definition of the 
matter there are no Protestants whom the evangelical 
churches woidd regard as believers^ and therefore for 
whom they would cherish the hope of salvation, 
who coidd be regarded as heretics^ or who are in any 
danger of eternal loss. 

But what, upon such a theory, becomes of the 
identification of the invisible with the visible, and 
that the Roman, Church ? This is the doctrine that 
every honest and sincere man who follows fully the 
Hght which he has, though it may be error, is a 
member of the true Church, though outwardly sepa- 
rated from her. What is that but to say that the 
true Church is the invisible Church, and that that in- 
visible Church is scattered throughout the world and 
may have its representatives in every external com- 
munion ? And what is that but precisely the rejected 
and anathematized Protestant doctrine ? 

No ! This theory is not Romanism. It is not 

^ From the German in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. tj f. 



86 The Roman System. 

consistent with the fundamental ideas of the system. 
It does not admit of consistent elaboration. It con- 
tradicts the authoritative and symbolic utterances of 
the Church. That a pope like Pius IX. should have 
yielded a certain recognition to it does not legitimate 
it within the system. His various utterances when 
taken together may well bring upon him the sharp 
condemnation of Delitzsch, who says : '' The words 

of the Allocution prove .... that Pius IX 

not ojily ivas not infallible, but zvas not even capable 
of consistent dogmatic thinking T ^ When apologetic 
interests yield to the consistent statement of Roman 
doctrine, that doctrine is that out of the pale of 
Rome there is no salvation. 

We shall reserve the reply to this position to a 
later point. When the evangelical doctrine of the 
way of salvation shall have been treated, the assump- 
tion of Rome, which is rejected even by some of her 
children, will be finally disproved.^ 

§ 48. One remark, however, we must add. There 
appears here for the first time what we shall often 
subsequently note, the strange ambiguity and internal 
inconsistency of this iron system, apparently so firm 
and unyielding, for which its defenders claim the 
attribute of absolute and unchangeable truth. The 
church is the only " ark " in which salvation from 
the flood of destruction is possible; yet some not in 
the ark will be borne above the swelling tide. So 
again, the church is the agency by which, through 
the sacraments, absolute certainty of the impartation 
of grace is afforded to the recipient of these outward 

^ op. cit., p, 80. 2 See g ^^^ below. 



Ambigtcity of the System. 87 

signs ; yet, if the priest did not intend to do what the 
church does, the apparently holy ceremony was 
aothing, and no grace was imparted — and who can 
be certain of the intention of the priest? Sins must 
be confessed to be forgiven, and hence the priest 
must search the heart of the penitent, though he 
may thereby excite unhallowed thoughts and pro- 
voke sinful actions ; yet it is better that a sin be 
unconfessed and unforgiven than that an evilly sug- 
gestive question should be asked. These examples 
are only to convey the thought that it is almost as 
difficult to find what the Roman system is as to find 
what are the grounds upon which it is held, or what 
the facts in respect to the statements made in its sup- 
port. Let the eye of the reader be open to this 
peculiarity as he proceeds. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HIERARCHY. 

§ 49. The Church to the CathoHc is the visible 
Church ; and in a preeminent sense the visible Church 
is the clergy. The laity are the passive recipients 
of blessing; the clergy are the active Church, leading, 
instructing, interceding for, and governing the rest. 
The doctrine of the priesthood is a direct conse- 
quence of the doctrine of the Church as the visible 
Church. 

Mohler expresses the connection of these ideas 
well in the following passage : 

*' The fundamental conception of the Church as a 
divine-human institution recurs at this point in a 
very striking form. In accordance with it, first of 
all, a divine inward calling and an enduement from 
on high are necessary for the public service of the 
Church, the work of teaching and the administration 
of the sacraments. But since the divine and invisible 
essence of the Church is united with a human visible 
form, the divine calling must necessarily be first 
recognized and then accepted below, and the heav- 
enly enduement must become evident by means of 
an act accessible to the senses and performed in the 
external Church. That is to say, the authorization 
to perform public service in the Church is conferred 
by a sacrament, an outward act which is to be per- 
formed by men after the commission of Christ, and 

88 



^ The External Priesthood, 89 

which partly symboHzes and partly communicates 
the inward and divine. Introduction into an invisible 
Church requires only a spiritual baptism ; continuance 
in the same only inward nutrition — one may not say 
with the body of Christ, because body at once sug- 
gests the outward origination of the Church, but 
with the Logos of God. An invisible church needs 
only an inward and purely spiritual offering and a 
universal priesthood.^ But the case is different with 
a visible church. This requires that baptism with 
fire and the Spirit should be a baptism with water 
also, and that the sustenance of the soul which 
Christ supplies should be brought before the vision 
by means of corporeal food. An outward offering is 
also involved in its idea. The case is the same with 
the consecration of priests : the inward and the out- 
ward consecration belong together, the heavenly and 
the earthly anointing are united in one. Since the 
Church is intrusted with the maintenance of the doc- 
trine and institutions of Christ, she cannot immedi- 
ately reverence every one who may say that he is 
inwardly consecrated as a priest, as truly such ; 
rather, as he must first be accurately and strenuously 
instructed and educated in the divine doctrine of the 
Church in order to propagate it, so he must receive 
through the Church, through her outward consecra- 
tion, the inward consecration from God ; that is, he 
receives the Holy Ghost through the laying on of 
the hands of the bishop. The visibility and the per- 

^ Note that this sentence surrenders the whole contention to the Prot- 
estants, provided they prove that the Church is not " visible " in the 
Catholic sense. 



go The Ro77ian System, 

manence of the Church demand, accordingly, an 
ecclesiastical ordination beginning with Christ, who 
is the beginning, and continuing in unbroken succes- 
sion, so that, just as the apostles were sent forth by 
the Saviour and they again installed bishops, these 
in their turn should appoint successors for them- 
selves, and so on till our day. It is by this succes- 
sion, beginning with the Saviour and handed down 
unbroken through the bishops, that we can recog- 
nize, as by an external mark, what is the true Church 
founded by Christ." ^ 

§ 50. Definition. Perrone, therefore, well ex- 
presses the essential elements of the Catholic doc- 
trine of the priesthood in the following definition : 
" The sacred order and sacrament divinely instituted, 
by which is conferred the power of consecrating the 
body and blood of the Lord, as well as of remitting 
and retaining sins." ^ Or, more at large, it may be 
defined as the order, established by Christ, endued 
with peculiar grace through consecration imparted 
in unbroken succession from the beginning, for the 
purpose of administering the sacraments and govern- 
ing the Church and forming the medium of all com- 
munion between Christ and his people. It is, indeed, 
through the priesthood that the Church performs its 
mediatorial and representative office between men 
and God. 

Protestants should be on their guard against 
forming the idea that in thus maintaining the par- 
ticular priesthood of the clergy the Catholic Church 
intends to deny the general priesthood of all believ- 

^ Symbolik, pp. 388-390. 2 Yq1_ \\\ ^ -^ ^jq. 



Catholic Proof of the Priesthood, 91 

ers. Protestant polemics have sometimes seemed to 
imply this. But it is not the fact. The Roman 
Catechism says that there is a " twofold priesthood," 
one inward and the other outward. '' As to the 
inward priesthood, all believers, after they have been 
washed with the water of salvation, are called priests, 
but especially the just. . . . But the outward priest- 
hood does not belong to the multitude of all the 
faithful, but to certain men," ^ etc. Thus the uni- 
versal priesthood of all behevers is maintained, though 
with what modifications of the New Testament idea 
we shall later see. Nor does the CathoHc system 
make the priesthood essential to the performance of 
every ecclesiastical function. Baptism may be per- 
formed in case of extreme peril of death by a layman. 
Christian antiquity is full of indications of the validity 
of non-clerical functions in case of need. But yet the 
emphasis is laid upon the necessity of ordination. 
The priest is more than the orderly channel of the 
communication of grace : he is, in general, essential 
to it. 

§ 51. Proof. Perrone divides the subject into four 
parts: (i) The external and visible priesthood, insti- 
tuted by Christ ; (2) this priesthood not common to 
all Christians ; (3) to be propagated by an external 
rite in the Church ; and (4) this rite a true sacrament. 
He conducts the proof upon the lines laid down by 
the Council of Trent in the following passage : " Sac- 
rifice and priesthood are, by the ordinance of God, in 
such wise conjoined, as that both have existed in 
every law. Whereas, therefore, in the New Testa- 

1 Pa7's. a., cap. vli., qucBst. xxii. 



9^ The Roman System, 

ment, the Catholic Church has received from the 
institution of Christ, the holy, visible sacrifice of the 
eucharist ; it must needs also be confessed that there 
is in that church a new, visible, and external priest- 
hood, into which the old has been translated. And 
the sacred Scriptures show, and the tradition of the 
Catholic Church has always taught, that this priest- 
hood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, 
and that to the apostles and their successors in the 
priesthood was the power delivered of consecrating, 
offering, and administering his body and blood, as 
also of forgiving and retaining sins." ^ The priest- 
hood is thus justified by the reality of the sacrifice 
offered in the eucharist. Upon this point he presents 
no other argument. As to the second point, the 
priesthood not common to all Christians, he argues 
that the priesthood was committed at the first Lord's 
Supper only to those who were present, the apos- 
tles. It is also reasonable that, if the sacrifices of 
old required special priests, the greater sacrifice of 
the new covenant should have its special priests 
much more. And it was upon the apostles only 
that the power of remitting sins was conferred in 
John XX. The authority of the Church is adduced 
for the same position by a quotation from Chrysos- 
tom. The third point is sustained by the plain cases 
of ordination in the New Testament. The argument 
for the sacramental character of the rite is derived 
from propriety, and depends too much upon the 
general idea of sacrament in the Roman Church to 
receive worthy consideration before that topic shall 

^ Schaff, Creeds, ii., i86, 187. 



Reply. 93 

have been reached in the regular order of our dis- 
cussion. 

§ 52. Reply. The fundamental and decisive argu- 
ment for the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood is 
thus shown to be its necessity to the existence in the 
Church of a true sacrifice. It is the CathoHc doc- 
trine that the eucharist is not merely a memorial, but 
a real repetition of the sacrifice of Calvary, so. that it 
is a ''true sacrifice properly so called." This doctrine 
Protestantism denies. As it denies the doctrine, so 
it must deny the consequence drawn from it. It 
will not be attempted at this point to substantiate 
this denial, since the full force of the Protestant argu- 
ments against the idea of a sacrifice in the Church 
cannot be made evident till the general subject of 
the sacraments is reached. Enough to say here 
simply that the representations of the Scriptures 
make any repetition of the sacrifice of Christ by him- 
self, and much more by any others, impossible ; for 
we read that Christ "' needeth not daily, like those high 
priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his ow^n sins, 
and then for the sins of the people : for this he did 
once for all, when he offered up himself:" and again : 
'' Nor yet that he should offer himself often ; . . . 
but now once at the end of the ages hath he been 
manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of him- 
self:" and still again, '' He, when he had offered one 
sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand 
of God." ^ 

But though we thus defer our complete answer to 
the argument to another point, various subsidiary 

^ Heb. vii. 27, ix. 25, 26, x. 12, 



94 The Roman Systein. 

arguments may be considered immediately. The 
Scriptures give no support, as the Council of Trent 
asserts, to the CathoHc idea of the priesthood. The 
allusion of the council to Hebrews vii. 12 in the 
word " translated," is of no force, since that passage 
relates to the transfer of the priesthood from the 
order of Aaron to that of Melchizedek, and the 
Melchizedekian priest is Christ. In fact, Christ is 
everywhere held up as the only New Testament 
priest in the literal sense. He is the " one mediator 
between God and men" (i. Tim. ii. 5). In reply to 
the argument that the eucharist was given to the 
apostles only to celebrate, it might be a fair re- 
joinder, and certainly one impossible positively to 
refute, that it was not given to them as apostles but 
as disciples. We shall give another form to this 
reply, however, by stating that certainly that other 
great power, which the Catholic doctrine calls the 
power to '* forgive or retain sins," which is also char- 
acteristic of the priesthood, was not given to Peter or 
to the apostles as such, but to them as believers, 
since it was expressly given, in Matt, xviii. 15-20, to 
the whole Church. The only escape from this con- 
clusion is to say that the word '* church " in the 
passage in question means the clergy, which is 
against the usage of Scripture. But if the whole 
Church has the power, it is impossible to argue 
from the power to a special priesthood necessary to 
exercise it. 

§ 53. Protestants do not, however, reject all the 
ideas which Catholics associate with the office of the 
priesthood. They do not deny the fact of New Tes- 



Protestant Ordination, 95 

tament ordination, nor the necessity in a well regu- 
lated church of an outward as well as an inward call 
to the public ofifice of instruction and government in 
the church. Like the Catholics, they do not '' im- 
mediately reverence every one who may say that he 
is inwardly consecrated as a priest, as truly such." 
They educate their ministry, and they examine them 
as to their qualifications. But they maintain that 
ordination is installment in an office, and that the 
conferment of office is only the recognition of a pecul- 
iar fitness in the ordained for the performance of 
what any Christian has the essential right to do, if 
he is fit. They would generally maintain with 
Luther in his Address to the German Nobles that 
" if a handful of pious Christian laymen were caught 
and thrown into a wilderness, if they had no conse- 
crated priest with them, and, agreeing in the matter, 
elected one among them and conferred upon him 
the office of baptizing, holding mass, absolving, and 
preaching, he would be as truly a priest as if all the 
bishops and popes had consecrated him." ^ That is 
to say, the priestly power, such as it is, resides in the 
Church, and may at any time be assumed and exer- 
cised by the Church. To be sure, it is only figura- 
tively priestly, for the true priest is Christ alone. 
But so far as Christ has appointed his servants to 
represent him in instructing men, and in praying for 
them, and in giving them the sacred symbols and 
pledges of his forgiving grace, that appointment be- 
longs essentially to all believers. It was never com- 
mitted to any order of men who were essential to its 

1 After Hase, p. 95. 



96 The Roman System, 

transmission and whose presence was essential to the 
existence of the Church. To the end it remains 
true that '' where two or three are gathered together 
in my name, there am I in the midst of them." 

§ 54. The historical argument for the priesthood 
is equally untenable. Perrone quotes Chrysostom 
in its favor, who flourished about the year 400. Of 
course, such testimony is valueless as to the ideas of 
the early Church. He might have quoted Crypian 
(d. 258), who styles the clergy priests, speaks of sac- 
rifice and altar, and makes the priests to '' offer for " 
the congregation.^ But Cyprian stood at that fatal 
turning point where the way diverged toward the 
Roman system. The eariier fathers did not recog- 
nize any priesthood in the Church. It is true that it 
was very early the custom to compare the ministers 
of the New Testament Church to the priests of the 
Old Testament, as even in the Epistle of Clement to 
the Corinthians. But this carried with it no idea of 
a true priesthood in the Catholic sense. Justin Mar- 
tyr declares that all '' behevers " are '' the true high- 
priestly race of God " and represents *' Christians in 
all places throughout the world " as presenting the 
eucharistic sacrifice, — not the officers of the congre- 
gation.^ The same conception is found in Irenaeus. 
He says, " All the righteous possess the sacerdotal 
rank,"^ and represents ''the Church" as offering the 
oblation.* In neither of these writers is any trace of 
modern Catholicism to be found. The sacrifice is 
not the body and blood of Christ, but bread and wine, 

1 Ep. xvii. 2, et al. mult, 2 Dial., 116, 117, 

3 Bk. iv., 8, 3. * Bk., iv., 17, 5. 



The Fathers not for a Priesthood, 97 

and it is not a propitiatory offering, but a thank offer- 
ing, an oblation. Tertullian, in whose time the appel- 
lation of priest for the ministers of the Church had 
become common, has a remarkable passage. He 
says : " Are not even we laics priests ? .... It 
is the authority of the Church, and the honor 
which has acquired sanctity through the joint 
session of the order, which has established the 
difference between the order and the laity. Accord- 
ingly, where there is no joint session of the ecclesi- 
astical order, you offer, and baptize, and are priest 
alone for yourself. But where three are, a Church 
is, albeit they be laics." ^ And even Augustine says : 
*' As we call all believers Christians on account of 
the mystical chrism, so we call all priests because 
they are members of the one priest." ^ If anything is 
clear from a comprehensive and accurate review of 
the early fathers, it is that the idea of the priesthood 
in the Church, first introduced in a figurative sense, 
developed into the Catholic conception by the oper- 
ation of the same forces which brought about the 
doctrine of a true sacrifice in the Church, and that 
both of these changes w^ere illegitimate and resulted 
in a corruption of the original New Testament 
doctrine. 

§ 55. Roman Catholic custom has surrounded the 
priesthood with a sacredness which has led to 
many expressions of reverence for the office and the 
person of the priest which are themselves an argument 
against the doctrine of the Church. The Jesuit 
Weissenbach thus utters himself: " Pardon us, 

1 De exhor. cast., 7. 2 civ. Dei, xx., 10. 

7 



gS The Roman System. 

angelic spirits, we know your greatness. But have 
you even the keys of heaven, Hke the priesthood ? 
Can you produce the true God at your command? 
Pardon us even thou, O Queen of Heaven ! Thou 
canst by thy intercession procure the forgiveness 
even of the greatest sins, but of thine oztm pozver thou 
canst forgive none, as our priests do. Once, but once 
only, hast thou borne the incarnate God, even this 
only in the state of misery and of poverty. But our 
priests surpass thee at the very point where thou 
surpassest all. They can, zvhen, zvherCy and so often 
as they will^ call down the divine Son from the bosom 
of Ids glory ^ from the right hand of the almighty 
Father, upon the earth, and in a certain and real and 
genuine sense for our purpose bare him into the 
world." ^ All good things can be abused ; but a 
doctrine which so readily lends itself to expressions 
which shock refined Christian feeling, as these do, 
whether Protestant or Catholic feeling, is certainly a 
doubtful doctrine, to say the least which one can 
venture to say. 

§ 56. The Episcopate. The priesthood centers in 
the episcopate, for to this office are reserved certain 
functions, such as confirmation and ordination, while 
no other priestly function is forbidden to the 
bishop. This superiority in rank, function, and 
office, is declared by the Roman system to be of 
divine right. It necessarily follows that the Church 
must maintain that the bishops were instituted by 
Christ. Perrone's argument ^ is that this was done 

1 Quoted in Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 103. 

2 Prcclcctiones, vol. iii., p. 428 ff. 



Roman Episcopate not in New Test. 99 

when Christ appointed the apostles and '' put them 
over the disciples. For Christ gave the apostles the 
highest power in the Church and promised them that 
they should sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel/^ This is his entire scriptural argu- 
ment, the insufficiency of which he seems to feel, 
since, though about to treat the patristic argument 
under a special head, he adds at once the state- 
ment : '' This is the almost unanimous opinion of the 
fathers, that the bishops are the successors of the 
apostles/' 

§ 57. But nothing can' be plainer to the candid 
reader of the New Testament than that it gives 
no hint of any such superiority of bishops to 
presbyters as the Roman system teaches. The text 
which Perrone quotes has nothing to do with any 
apostolic or episcopal jurisdiction upon the earth, for 
it reads : '' In the regeneration when the Son of man 
shall sit on the throne of his glory [that is, the judg- 
ment throne, as in Matt. xxv. 3 1], ye also shall sit upon 
twelve thrones.'^ The two names, bishop and elder, 
were applied to the same men, of whom there might be 
several in any church. The case of the '' elders '^ of 
the church at Ephesus (Acts xx. 17), who were styled 
'' bishops '^ (vs. 28), is a sufficient proof of this state- 
ment. The Epistle to the Philippians mentions only 
" bishops '^ and *' deacons,^' no presbyters. No single 
man is referred to in the writings of Paul as head in 
any apostolic church, for the local church with its 
elders, a body of several men, does all that is to be 
done. Peter exhorts the '' elders,^' with whom he, 
an apostle, is a " fellow-elder,'^ to " feed/' or shepherd, 



loo The Romaii System, 

the flock of God (according to the Roman ideas, an 
episcopal function), to which many ancient authori- 
ties add the phrase '' exercising the oversight '^ 
[incaxoTcouvTsc). And in the Epistle to Titus (i. 5-9) 
Paul directs that elders be appointed in every city, 
gives for them the same qualifications as are given 
for '' bishops ^^ in i Tim. iii., and then proceeds : *' For 
t/ie bisJiop must be blameless,'^ thus completely 
identifying the bishopric with that eldership about 
which he is talking in the whole context. 

These facts, and others which might be cited, are 
so plain that Perrone does not pretend to deny them. 
He adopts the ingenious evasion of Petavius that in 
the infancy of the Church " either all the presbyters or 
the most of them were so ordained as to obtain at the 
same time the rank of bishop and presbyter '^ in order 
that they might all confirm and ordain. He con- 
tinues : '' So then many bishops administered ecclesi- 
astical affairs in one and the same city or church by 
common counsel, obeying the apostles as pontiffs of 
a higher grade, until, that first charity and love of 
imitating Christ and embracing modesty and humil- 
ity growing cold, to remove dissensions and to 
remedy, as Jerome says, schism, it was pleasing that 
some one of the presbyters should be elected to preside 
over the rest. And so many ceased to be created 
not only of equal dignity, but also of order and 
power, the prerogative both of honor and jurisdic- 
tion being transferred to one, and the succession of 
the bishops began.^^ That is, it is perfectly plain 
that presbyters and bishops had the same office and 
did the same things. Protestants affirm, therefore, 



Not in the Sub-apostolic Church, loi 

that they were not essentially distinguished. Petavius 
supposes a double ordination, of which there is not 
the slightest historical proof, without which neither 
he nor Perrone can defend the Catholic position. 
But this is to write the history not upon histori- 
cal grounds, but upon dogmatic. The reasoning 
proceeds in a circle. The dogmatics were to be 
proven by the history, which in its turn is made to 
rest upon the dogmatics. The only reason for the 
dogma is the dogma itself 

§ 58. There might be more excuse for this bad 
logic if the patristic argument whic^ Perrone next 
adduces had any validity. If it were certain that 
such a bishopric as the Roman system demands 
existed fully developed in the Church when it 
emerged into the sub-apostolic age, then it might be 
plausibly urged that the obscurity of the subject in 
the New Testament was due to the meagerness of 
the records. Perrone quotes Clement to the Corin- 
thians : ** For his own peculiar services are assigned 
to the high priest, and their own proper place is pre- 
scribed to the priests, and their own special ministra- 
tions devolve upon the Levites." There may be some 
doubt precisely what this comparison of the Chris- 
tian Church to the Jewish is intended to signify. 
Lipsius thinks that the '' high priest " is Christ. 
That it does not denote the bishop in distinction 
from the presbyters is plain from the remainder of 
the epistle. In chapter xlii. the apostles are said to 
have appointed '' bishops and deacons," thus putting 
the matter in the same light as it appears in the New 
Testament passages above cited. The following 



I02 The Roman System, 

chapters make Clement's understanding of the rela- 
tion of the bishopric and eldership indisputable. In 
chapter xliv. he discusses ejecting men from the 
" episcopate," and immediately adds, referring to the 
same thing, ''Blessed are \ho^it presbyters'' who have 
not been thus ejected—/, r., from the episcopate. And 
in chapter xlvii., referring to the trouble with the 
bishops, he calls it " sedition against presbyters!' 
The Roman doctrine of the episcopate was conse- 
quently totally foreign to Clement's thought. The 
nearly contemporaneous '' Teaching of the Twelve 
Apostles," discovered since Perrone wrote, occupies 
the same posnion with Clement, exhorting in its 
fifteenth chapter that " bishops and deacons " be 
elected over the churches. No presbyters are men- 
tioned. Ignatius, whom Perrone quotes thrice, does 
not support his argument. He distinguishes sharply, 
it is true, between the bishop, the college of presby- 
ters, and the deacons, but there is no evidence of the 
existence in his mind of the Roman idea of the epis- 
copate. What he values in that office is the unity 
brought about in the Church by obedience to a 
single leader. He represents the time when, '' to 
remedy schism," one presbyter had been put at the 
head of the presbytery. Indeed, the very passage 
from which Perrone first quotes is sufficient to over- 
throw his claims (Smyrnaeans viii.), for Ignatius will 
not allow anything to be done without the bishop. 
'' It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize 
or to celebrate a love feast," he says ; but this is not 
because there were certain functions which belonged 
to the bishopric as an order. Who ever heard of 



Hatch on Rise of Episcopate. 103 

baptism being restricted to bishops ? Ignatius is in- 
sisting on such points to secure harmony, and that 
alone. His bishop was no Roman bishop, but a 
Protestant leader and pastor. And then, the bishop 
is compared to Christ and not to the apostles, to 
whom, by a turn inexplicable upon the Roman 
theory, the presbyters are compared — '' Follow . . . 
the presbytery as ye would the apostles !" 

It is not necessary to probe farther into the cita- 
tions of Perrone, which are next made from Clement 
of Alexandria, Origen, TertuUian, and Cyprian. If 
the case is lost in the New Testament and the ear- 
liest fathers, no subsequent appearance of an epis- 
copal order in the Church can justify its divine orig- 
ination. Modern research has not left us without a 
clear view of the rise of the episcopate, and has thus 
contributed what the present age needed to the refu- 
tation of the claims of Rome. Dr. Edwin Hatch, 
late Reader in History in Oxford University,^ has 
shown the great similarity which existed between the 
early Christian associations and other associations — 
for charity, burial, etc. — in the world about them. Just 
as those societies arose by a natural impulse un- 
der the peculiarities of the times, so, he thinks, the 
Christian societies or churches arose by a spiritual 
gravitation. Men of like faith naturally met together. 
This " meeting " {kxxXrjata) our Lord had contem- 
plated (Matt, xviii. 17). The officers of the churches 
were developed like the same officers in the societies, 
as they were needed (Acts vi. 1-6), and were called 

1 Organization of the Early Christian Churches, fourth edit., 1892, pp. 
26-112. 



104 The Roman System. 

by the same names. Even the word " bishop " was 
a secular term, and meant overseer of the charities, 
or treasurer. That very word " Ordo," of which the 
CathoHc system makes so much, and which is sup- 
posed to designate some mysterious gift pertaining 
to the clergy, was used of any secular body of offi- 
cers, of a municipal senate, or of the administrative 
committee of an association. Thus the episcopate 
was in some places the first office to be established. 
In other cases the bishop was the president of the 
board of officers. Elders arose in like manner after 
the analogy of the synagogue and of the Greek so- 
cieties also. Over these a president was finally set 
This free organization, growing out of the circum- 
stances and conveniences of the times, diverse some- 
what in character, was gradually harmonized by the 
constant intercourse of the churches, and became 
finally the local episcopate in each several church ; 
then the diocesan episcopate ; then the Nicene sys- 
tem ; at last in the West, the papal hierarchy. Such 
is the picture which Dr. Hatch has drawn, with large 
probability that it is correct. It needs no comment 
to show how utterly irreconcilable it is with the 
theories and the claims of Rome. 

§ 59. The Celibacy of the Clergy. The law 
of the Roman Church forbids persons living in the 
married state to be ordained and persons in holy 
orders to marry. This is, however, theoretically 
merely a matter of discipline. It is freely acknowl- 
edged by Roman Catholic writers that celibacy has 
not always been exacted of the clergy. The argu- 
ments for it are arguments based upon propriety. 



Celibacy of the Clergy, 105 

They are in the main (i) that ceHbacy leaves the 
cleric more free for a performance of the exacting 
duties of his office, and (2) that, as continence is a 
more holy state than marriage, it is especially desir- 
able for those who have constantly to minister at the 
altar. Yet it will be seen that the latter argument 
begins to verge toward an argument for the neces- 
sity of celibacy ; and the evident tendency of Roman 
discussion is to exalt the requirement from the rank 
of a discipHnary to that of a religious requirement. 
Thus the Council of Trent says : " If any one saith 
that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or regulars, 
who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to 
contract marriage, and that being contracted, it is 
valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law or vow, 
... let him be anathema;" and it puts celibacy 
above matrimony in the words : " If any one saith 
that .... it is not better and more blessed to re- 
main in virginity or in ceHbacy than to be united in 
matrimony, let him be anathema." ^ Hence it was 
to be expected that Cardinal Gibbons ^ would main- 
tain that Christ preferred virgins, and would deny the 
manifest facts about the apostles. St. Peter, he ac- 
knowledges, was married, — a strange fact for the 
reputed founder of the Church which exalts virginity 
and prohibits marriage to all his successors; but, 
upon the authority of St. Jerome (who flourished 
about 400, too late to know anything about it per- 
sonally), and of Peter's own words, " Behold, we 
have left all things and followed thee," he asserts 
that Peter left his wife to undertake the ministry of 

1 Schaff 's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 197. 2 p p^ p ^^^ ff^ 



io6 The Rovtan System, 

the gospel. St. Paul says that '' the rest of the apos- 
tles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas " led 
about " a wife that is a believer" (i Cor. ix. 5). The 
cardinal says that this is a mistranslation, since it sub- 
stitutes the word wife for wo7nan. But the cardinal 
knows that the Greek word for wife and woman is the 
same, as in many other languages, and that the context 
must settle the meaning of any particular case. He 
adds : '* It is evident that St. Paul does not speak 
here of his wife, since he had none ; but he alludes 
to those pious women who voluntarily waited upon 
the apostles and ministered to them in their mission- 
ary journey." Of course, he does not speak of his 
wife, since he is expressly denying that he had one, 
though he had the '' right " to have one, as well as 
to '' eat and drink." That the apostles had women 
attending them upon their missionary journeys is 
altogether improbable, and under the circumstances 
and customs of the times well nigh impossible. It 
would have exposed them constantly to the worst 
suspicions. The cardinal also adduces St. Paul's 
words: *'A bishop must be sober, just, holy, conti- 
nent," interpreting the last word of non-intercourse, 
as he does the word '^ chastity " in the passage, *' Be 
thou an example to the faithful .... in charity, in 
faith, in chastity." But Paul has just before said 
that the bishop must be the *' husband of one wife," 
which, though under the law of common sense it 
may not require that every bishop be married, makes 
marriage at least the rule, as it is the rule in Protest- 
ant communities to-day. 

§ 60. If celibacy is a holier state than matrimony, 



Marriage Holy. 107 

as Catholic Christianity has from the distant past 
profoundly felt, it is proper that the peculiar holiness 
of the celibate should be ascribed to a class of men 
who have such holy offices to perform as are required 
of the CathoHc clergy. This is the ideal element in 
the Roman position, and its strength should not 
be overlooked by Protestants. But the foundation 
of the structure is its unsound part. " Marriage is 
honorable in all, and the bed undefiled " (Heb. xiii. 4). 
The Catholic idea is directly traceable through history 
to monasticism, and that to the heathen institutions 
which arose in the Orient from its constant inclina- 
tion to philosophic dualism. The flesh was deemed 
essentially evil. But the gospel does not occupy 
this position. The essential appetites of human na- 
ture were given it to effect great and holy ends 
through their proper gratification. He that denies 
the demands of the body for food and drink will find 
alluring visions of banquets arising in his disordered 
soul to torment him ; while he who eats and drinks 
as he ought will not know what appetite or tempta- 
tion is. So with the sexual appetite. The married 
life is chaste. Unholy thoughts and impure desires 
will have no place in it, but they will arise in the 
mind of the involuntary and unwilling celibate. 
Protestants do not maintain, as Cardinal Gibbons, in 
an unhappy hour, condescended to intimate, that 
'^ continency is impracticable." They do not deny 
the purity of the lives of many priests of the Roman 
Church nor that of many celibates among them- 
selves. But they do maintain that enforced celibacy 
is a dangerous and abnormal thing, and doubtless 



io8 The Roman System, 

seriously displeasing to Almighty God. The his- 
tory of Catholic celibacy is a sufficient proof of this 
statement/ 

§ 6 1. But the practical reasons which favor celi- 
bacy have been, no doubt, the strongest motives for 
maintaining it. Cardinal Gibbons says that some 
ascribe the progress of the Catholic Church '' to her 
thorough organization ; others to the farseeing wis- 
dom of her 'chief pastors. Without undervaluing 
these and other auxiliaries, I incline to the beHef 
that, under God, the Church has no tower of strength 
more potent than the celibacy of the clergy." ^ He 
goes on to mention the freedom of the priests from 
all diverting and impeding cares. Cardinal Pallavi- 
cini was still plainer when he said that celibacy was 
essential to the existence of the Roman hierarchy, 
since the married priest would be bound by wife 
and children to the civil order and cease to be a de- 
pendent of the Roman see.^ No doubt celibacy is 
essential to the maintenance of the system of domin- 

1 I gladly refrain from going into the argument hinted at in the last 
sentence. It has been drawn out at length in that exceedingly thor- 
ough and able book of Mr. Henry C. Lea's, An Historical Sketch of 
Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian C^^^r^/^, second edition, 1884. This 
gentleman has devoted himself in a series of volumes to exposing the 
abuses of the Catholic system from an historical standpoint, and has 
rendered service of incalculable value. I will only refer to the mani- 
fest proof which the very bitterness of the contest in which that pope 
who fastened celibacy upon the Church, Gregory VII., found himself 
involved, and the numerous complaints of Roman synods over the ex- 
cesses of the priesthood, with the severe laws continually enacted, 
afford of the danger which has been incurred and the evil which has 
resulted from the enforcement of celibacy. The details are too repul- 
sive for repetition here, however necessary it is that they be known. 

2 F. F., p. 459. 3 Quoted by Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 121. 



Arguments for Celibacy, 109 

ion which Rome has ever sought to maintain over 
the hearts and Hves of men. But has dominion, 
power, arbitrary control, been a worthy aim for a 
Christian Church ? and has it resulted in blessing 
either to the Church or the people ? To Protestants 
it seems as if the ambition of the Church for worldly 
power had been its chief curse from the beginning. 
If Rome's eye is fixed upon herself, upon her own 
aggrandizement and magnificence, then she may do 
well to maintain celibacy. But if she wishes truly 
to benefit the souls of men, then she will permit her 
priests to fit themselves for the purest and best min- 
istrations by themselves passing through that school 
of life in which all the virtues of man are best devel- 
oped. Even our Saviour was " made perfect through 
suffering," and is able to '' succor them that are 
tempted " because himself '^ tempted in all points 
like as we are, yet without sin." And so the parish 
priest who knows what the duties and privileges of 
family life are by experience, who has travailed in 
soul for his own children, has experienced the sweet 
fellowship of woman in sorrow and in joy, has wept 
over the grave of his own loved ones or seen them 
enter upon the joys and triumphs of successful life, 
can enter into like joys and sorrows among his flock 
as no celibate would ever think of doing. 

The actual usefulness of a pastor's family in the 
work of the Church is a fact of which Roman apolo- 
gists seem to be ignorant. Cardinal Gibbons says 
that '' the world has hitherto been converted by un- 
married clergymen, and only by them will it continue 
to be converted." We have already seen that Cath- 



no The Roman System, 

olic writers seem generally ignorant as to the suc- 
cess of Protestant missions. American Protestants 
alone are now (1898) expending about ;^6,ooo,ooo 
annually upon their missions among the heathen. 
The detailed missionary reports give a total of com- 
municants in all Protestant foreign missions as 
1,209,745 for 1895. Such missions are not failures. 
Generally Protestants expect that their missionaries 
shall be married, since they have found such mis- 
sionaries more efficient than any others. In some 
of its missions the Congregational Foreign Mission- 
ary Society (known as the ''American Board") re- 
fuses to send out celibates. The wife of a mission- 
ary is often as useful in missionary work as the mis- 
sionary himself; and the erection of a Christian 
family upon heathen soil, with its chaste wife and its 
obedient and intelligent children, is itself the estab- 
lishment of a model Christian institution without 
which the missionary facilities would be seriously 
abridged. 

§ 62. If the Roman Church has its ideal of the 
priesthood, so has the Protestant of the pastorate. 
The Protestant pastor lives among his flock as one 
of them. He enters into all their life because he 
sustains the same relations as they. He, too, is hus- 
band, father, citizen, neighbor, and friend. He 
strives in all these things to be an example to his 
people, to furnish them by his own walk with a 
pattern by which they may regulate theirs. His 
wife is a minister to the women of his congregation 
where he himself cannot be ; his children are helpers 
to the children of others. Upon Sunday it is his 



The Protestant Pastor, iii 

office to give public instruction in the principles and 
duties of religion in the church ; and here his power 
is multipHed because of the accumulated influence 
exerted by his daily life. His people have the greater 
confidence in his teachings because he proves them 
by his life among them. If he teaches from the 
pulpit, he teaches still more effectively in his daily 
intercourse with them. He occupies no inaccessible 
height, and has no mysterious and superior holiness. 
He is like his brethren and such as they are, only as 
special opportunities and greater grace make him 
better than they in some respects. Thus he has 
their love and confidence in the ordinary course of 
their lives ; and when his administrations are specially 
needed, in the hours of trial, and when heart and 
flesh fail, then he enters into their experience as one 
only can who has also suffered, who brings the 
sympathy which comes from personal knowledge of 
the power of trial and the greatness of the divine 
help. 

But aside from preparation for his office, the pastor 
needs to attain in the school of life the perfection of 
a man. Men and women are made to live with each 
other. It is the fundamental fault of the Roman 
system in respect to the present topic that it does 
not appreciate the place and work of woman. It 
views her too exclusively in one aspect. The same 
system which exalts the Virgin Mary far above her 
proper place, by a strange but characteristic incon- 
sistency reduces woman far beneath her true position. 
If sex makes woman the counterpart of man in one 
respect, she is made by her entire nature his counter- 



112 The Roman System. 

part and helper in every other. Man requires, in 
order to attain to the fully developed, thoroughly 
disciplined, well-rounded mascuHne character, associ- 
ation with the feminine. Man needs the inspiration 
of the higher and clearer moral view of woman ; his 
duller intellect needs the illumination of her intu- 
itions, his strength to be tempered with her sweet- 
ness, his force to be modified by her love. She on 
her part equally needs his force, strength, logic, 
ideality, and originality. The perfect man will be 
the man associated constantly with good women; 
and the priest needs to be the perfect man. 

§ 63. The Roman system thus moves in inconsis- 
tencies as to this theme, because it is at war with 
nature. Celibacy is a matter of discipline ; and yet 
it is well nigh a matter of faith. The Roman view 
of woman degrades her, while it compensates itself 
by ascribing to one woman superhuman and even 
divine attributes. It makes marriage a sacrament, 
and ascribes to it a peculiar and mystical holiness ; 
and at the same time it refuses this sacramental 
blessing to the class which it regards the most ex- 
alted and privileged in the Church. But to war 
against nature in its fundamental and essential in- 
stincts and necessities, is to war against God ; for the 
book of nature is as truly the book of God as is the 
book of revelation. He that finds himself in conflict 
with both these books, as the CathoHc does at this 
point, is indeed to be commiserated. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PAPACY. 

§ 64. The discussion of the doctrine of the Church 
in former chapters led us necessarily to the discus- 
sion of the infalHble authority of the Church, and 
that, since the definitions of the Vatican Council 
have made infallibility to have its organ in the pope, 
to the discussion of one portion of the papal office, 
namely, its supreme teaching power. There is an- 
other branch of power lodged by the Roman system 
in the pope to which we must now turn, and this is 
the power of supreme jurisdiction. 

§ 65. Vatican Definitions of Papal Supremacy. 
These, abridged as far as possible, are as follows : ^ 

"We therefore teach and declare that according 
to the testimony of the gospel the primacy of juris- 
diction over the universal Church of God was imme- 
diately and directly promised and given to blessed 
Peter the apostle by Christ the Lord. . . . The holy 
and blessed Peter . . . lives, presides, and judges, to 
this day and always, in his successors the bishops of 
the holy see of Rome, which w^as founded by him 
and consecrated by his blood. Whence, whosoever 
succeeds to Peter in this see, does by the institution 
of Christ himself obtain the primacy of Peter over 
the whole Church. . . . Hence we teach and declare 
that by the appointment of our Lord the Roman 

1 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 258 ff. 
8 113 



114 '^^^ Roma7i System. 

Church possesses a superiority of ordinary power 
over all other Churches, and that this power of juris- 
diction of the Roman pontiff, which is truly episco- 
pal, is immediate ; to which all, of whatever rite and 
dignity, both pastors and faithful, both individually 
and collectively, are bound by their duty of hierarch- 
ical subordination and true .obedience to submit not 
only in matters which belong to faith and morals, 
but also in those that appertain to the discipline and 
government of the Church throughout the world. 
. . . But so far is this power of the supreme pontiff 
from being any prejudice to the ordinary and imme- 
diate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which 
bishops, who have been set by the Holy Ghost to 
succeed and hold the place of the apostles, feed and 
govern each his own flock as true pastors, that this 
their episcopal authority is really asserted, strength- 
ened, and protected by the supreme and universal 
pastor. . . . We further teach and declare that he is 
the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all 
causes, the decision of which belongs to the Church, 
recourse may be had to his tribunal, and that none 
may reopen the judgment of the apostolic see, than 
whose authority there is no greater, nor can any law- 
fully review its judgment." 

In a word, these definitions make every individual 
Christian, as well as the whole Church, directly sub- 
ject to the pope. 

Cardinal Gibbons compares the transmission of 
the powers of Peter to the popes to the like trans- 
mission from the first president of the United States 
to his successors in office. He endeavors to make 



Development of the Curial System. 115 

the position acceptable by comparing the papal court 
with the Supreme Court at Washington, which is the 
ultimate tribunal in this government, as the papal is 
in the Church. And he implies in his whole argu- 
ment that the present position of the papacy in the 
Church, determined at Rome in the year 1870, is 
supported by all antiquity. 

§ 66. Development of the Present or Curiae 
System in the Roman Church. In antithesis to 
these positions, the fact is that the papal system, 
defined at Rome, is only one of the views of the 
location of authority in the Church which have been 
held during CathoHc history. The curial system is 
the victorious system, but it long shared with an- 
other the favor of the Church, with the episcopal 
system, which was the first to gain adherence, and 
which has been only slowly forced out of credit. 
The definitions above quoted show traces of this 
conflict between the rival conceptions of the supreme 
power, when they attempt to reconcile the ''imme- 
diate" jurisdiction of the popes, which touches every 
individual Christian, with the " power " of episcopal 
jurisdiction, which under such circumstances can be 
only the delegated exercise of another's power, as in 
fact it has become in the ultramontane, Vatican 
Church.^ 

The episcopal theory reached its culmination in 
the Council of Constance, which sat 1414 to 1418. 

^ An excellent discussion of this theme at considerable length, sup- 
plied with full citations from a large range of original authorities, may 
be found in Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, pp. 146-267, to whom I am indebted 
for much of what immediately follows. 



ii6 The Roman System, 

The long corruption and schism in the Church called 
for the most vigorous measures, and under the lead 
of the French divines, whose head was ^ Gerson, 
Chancellor of the University of Paris, the council 
set forth the theory since known as Gallicanism, re- 
moved three existing rival popes, and elected a fourth, 
thus reforming the Church in its '' head." Although 
Gerson himself declared that the plenitude of ecclesi- 
astical power resided in the pope, he said that it also 
resided in the Church and in its representative, the 
general council, since the Church has the power to 
determine the exercise of this plenary power accord- 
ing to its own will. The council itself, by an 
utterance in its fifth session, declared that it was the 
representative of the Catholic Church militant and 
affirmed its possession of power immediately conferred 
by Christ, '' which every one, of whatever condition 
or dignity, even the papal, is held to obey in those 
things which pertain to the faith and to the extirpa- 
tion of schism and the general reformation of the 
Church of God in head and members." Thus, with 
the use of the words ^ which are employed, accord- 
ing to Heinrich, to designate a cathedratic utterance, 
the central point of the Galilean theory was pro- 
mulgated, that the general council possesses a su- 
periority of jurisdiction over the pope.^ 

§ 67. But this theory was not consistent with the 
fundamental ideas of the Roman system, and was 

^ " Ordi?tat, diffinit, statuit, decernit, et declarat." Delitzsch, p. 
170. 

2 Innocent III. acknowledged that he might fall into heresy, and 
would then be subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. See Hase, p. 
164, for this and other examples. 



Development of the Cicrial System, 117 

destined to disappear before the papal system. It 
rested upon certain republican ideas derived from the 
works of Aristotle, and gave to the general body of 
the Church a prominence which they could not have 
under the sacerdotal theory of the clergy. If the 
Church possesses a hierarchy instituted by God, that 
hierarchy derives its privileges and powers from God 
directly, and hence not from the body of the Church. 
Hence the Church can never '' resume '^ its powers 
or determine their exercise according to its own will. 
The force of logic also tends directly to the su- 
premacy of the papacy. Mohler, who calls the Galli- 
can theory even in the year 1838 ''one already 
defunct,^' derives the papal supremacy from the visibil- 
ity of the Church.^ '' For a visible Church a visible 
head is necessarily required.'^ Otherwise, he declares, 
the unity of the episcopate would be dissolved, the 
Church divided up into various separate churches, 
and its authority in matters of faith destroyed. A 
mere symbol of ecclesiastical unity could never effect 
the preservation of these great interests, and that is 
what the pope would be under the Gallican theory. 

When the effort is made to bring the theory of the 
supremacy of councils into practical application, it is 
found to be impracticable. Councils cannot always 
be summoned with the celerity necessary to remedy 
definite errors. To meet this difficulty episcopalists 
have sometimes said that in cases of haste the pope 
might give a provisional decision, to which the faith- 
ful would be bound so long as no opposition in the 
Church at large was raised against it. But shall a 

1 Symbolik, p. 391 f. 



ii8 The Roman System. 

Christian man accept a decision as right till he is 
convinced it is ? And can he be convinced unless 
the pope have the power of deciding such questions ? 
He must remain in doubt — that is, he cannot really 
submit — till finally a general council is called and the 
true authority speaks. But, if a general council has 
been called, who is to give the decision ? Suppose 
that there is a minority and a majority. Can any de- 
cision be given then at all ? The ancient rule was that 
there should be three essential requisites for the estab- 
lishment of any doctrine — universality, perpetuity, and 
consent. Dollinger accordingly declared that there 
could be no decision except by unanimous agree- 
ment. But the Vatican Council declared that a 
majority should decide. And when the general 
council has spoken, who is to decide that it is a gen- 
eral council, or give general authority to its decisions ? 
The Galileans have sometimes said that the general 
consent of the Church gives authority to conciliar 
decisions. But it is the conciliar decision itself which 
is to express and give form to this same general 
consent in the Church. So that the council by its 
authority makes the general consent, and the gen- 
eral consent makes the authority of the council. 
That is the old fallacy of reasoning in a circle again. 
Hence, finally, it can only be the pope who can 
declare when a council is general. 

§ 68. It is not strange, therefore, that the most 
consistent thinkers of the Church, so soon as the 
papacy itself was fairly established, began to locate 
authority in the pope, and that this view prevailed 
over GalHcanism at the Vatican Council of 1870. 



The Curial System, 119 

The great popes of the heroic age of the papacy,' 
Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII.; 
Gratian (i 1 5 1) ; Thomas Aquinas ; Bonaventura ; 
Eugene IV. at Florence; Leo X.; the Council of 
Trent by its general assumptions and the method by 
which it conducted its business ; the Roman Cate- 
chism ; and, finally, long before the Vatican Council, 
Pius IX., who proclaimed the immaculate conception 
of the Virgin Mary upon his ow^n authority ; may be 
mentioned as maintaining by word or deed the 
supremacy of the pope in matters of jurisdiction and 
of infallible teaching in general. 

The victory of the papal system in 1870 was thus 
the logical and the historical outcome of the process 
upon which the Church embarked when it developed 
the papacy. 

§ 69. This papal or curial system may be sketched 
under the following heads : 

(i) In order to give to his Church, as a visible 
institution needing a perfect organization, the appro- 
priate and necessary head, our Lord bestowed upon 
the apostle Peter the first place of authority as his 
own representative in the kingdom of God upon 
earth. 

(2) To provide for the continuance of this headship 
in the Church there must be a succession in the 
primacy, and this is determined by the succession in 
the bishopric of Rome. As successor of Peter, who 
was the first bishop of Rome, the Roman bishop 
possesses supreme jurisdiction over the entire Church. 
Although all bishops are in a sense successors of the 
apostles, they do not succeed to all their rights, and 



I20 The Roman System, 

certainly not to that fullness of power which was 
lodged not in every apostle, but only in Peter. The 
pope as his successor, is, therefore, the only bishop 
in full possession of the apostoHc office and power, 
and hence his is the only truly apostolic see. 

The question which is suggested by the history of 
the papacy, as to the legitimacy of resistance to the 
pope under extraordinary conditions, has met with 
various answers. As himself the highest judge, he 
cannot be judged of any other power. Yet accord- 
ing to Bellarmine, if he seeks to destroy the Church, 
he may be resisted with military force. The same 
writer teaches that in times of schism a general coun- 
cil may decide who the true pope is ; but other 
curiaiists say. No ! Help in such a case can come 
from God alone. The canon Si Papa teaches that a 
pope *' found departing from the faith " may be 
judged by the Church, although all hold it very 
improbable that a pope can become a heretic, and 
some that it is impossible. 

(3) General councils are sometimes spoken of by 
curiaiists with great respect. Some even give them 
a share in the infallibility of the Church, and speak 
of a twofold organ of infallibility. But Perrone, who 
employs this style of speech, says that in case of a 
division, if the pope held with the minority, their 
decision would acquire by his agreement the char- 
acter of infallibility. " Where Peter is, there is the 
Church, whether the number of the bishops be 
greater or less." But this is in fact to make the 
general council superfluous, as was flatly asserted by 
Cardinal Orsi so long ago as 1722. 



Supremacy of the Pope, 121 

(4) The source of the jurisdiction of bishops is an- 
other question upon which curiaHsts are divided, but 
which admits in strictness of reasoning of but one 
answer. Many have taught that it was derived im- 
mediately from God. But if so, it can be exercised 
without the intervention of the pope, and he then 
possesses not the plenitude of power in the Church, 
but only the highest power. But if he possesses the 
plenitude of power, then a bishop is not a bishop in 
the full sense of the word, even if consecrated, till the 
pope has bestowed upon him jurisdiction. The 
bishops are hence " delegates '" of the pope, called 
by him into participation in the pastoral care : he is 
the real lord in every diocese. This is the ultimate 
curialist sentiment, as voiced by Bellarmine and 
others. 

§ 70. Cardinal Gibbons' Argument for the 
Supremacy of the Pope.^ This is historical. " I 
shall endeavor to show," says the cardinal, '^from 
incontestable historical evidence, that the popes have 
always, from the days of the apostles, continued to 
exercise supreme jurisdiction, not only in the West- 
ern Church till the Reformation, but also throughout 
the Eastern Church till the great schism of the ninth 
century." 

The argument of this chapter is built upon the 
preceding, in which the argument from the Scriptures 
for the primacy of Peter has been presented. We 
have had sufficient occasion in former chapters to 
review this argument, which is built principally upon 
the leading text. Matt. xvi. 18, and which derives 

1 F. F.,p. 132 ff. 



122 The Roman System. 

what strength it has from introducing into the allu- 
sions and statements of the Scripture narrative a sig- 
nificance, borrowed from dogmatic preconceptions, 
which no objective exegesis can justify. The same 
general character attaches to the historical discussion 
to which we are now to turn. 

The first argument is derived from " appeals." " If 
we find the see of Rome from the foundation of 
Christianity, entertaining and deciding cases of ap- 
peal from the oriental churches ; if we find that her 
decision was final and irrevocable, we must conclude 
that the supremacy of Rome over all the churches 
is an undeniable fact." Ten instances are cited to 
prove that such is the case. We shall examine 
them as fully as possible. 

I. ''Some dissension and scandal having occurred 
in the Church of Corinth, the matter is brought to 
the notice of pope Clement. He at once exercises 
his supreme authority by writing letters of remon- 
strance and admonition to the Corinthians 

Why did the Corinthians appeal to Rome far away 
in the West, and not to Ephesus so near home in 
the East, where the apostle John lived ? Evidently 
because the jurisdiction of Ephesus was local, while 
that of Rome was universal." 

The '' letters " of Clement are reduced by modern 
investigation to one, for the so-called second letter 
is now seen, with its recovered text, to be a homily, 
and is probably not by Clement at all. Of the first, 
it is not written in the name of Clement, whose 
name, in fact, does not occur in it, but in the name 
of "the Church of God which sojourns at Rome." 



Supremacy of the Pope, 123 

There is no positive evidence that Rome was for- 
mally consulted/ though it is possible that she was ; 
but if so, she did not issue an authoritative epistle, 
for no word occurs which implies authority, but sim- 
ply warned and exhorted in the spirit of friendly and 
fraternal equality. If the authority of Rome had 
been well estabhshed by previous argument, this let- 
ter might be quoted as an example of the exercise 
of her authority, but without such proof the letter 
affords none of itself It rather bears the marks of 
the perfect equality between churches which every 
other positive indication shows to have prevailed in 
the whole Ante-Nicene epoch. Nor is the argument 
derived from the proximity of Ephesus of much 
weight, for Rome was little more than twice as far 
as Ephesus in actual distance, and in ease of com- 
munication much nearer, to say nothing of the 
greater importance which it had as the imperial city. 
We must, therefore, decline to attach any. impor- 
tance to this case. 

2. ''About the year 190 the question regarding 
the proper day for celebrating Easter was agitated 
in the East and referred to pope St. Victor I. The 
Eastern Church generally celebrated Easter on the 
day on which the Jews kept the passover ; while in 
the West it was observed then, as it is now, on the 
first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox. 
St. Victor directs the Eastern churches, for the sake 

^ The phrase " respecting which you consulted us," found in some 
translations in Chapter I., is a mistranslation. It should read, " con- 
cerning the things which are discussed among you." The Greek is : 
Trept Twi/ lmC,yYTov\x.iviiiV -nap vfxtv irpayfidTiuv. 



124 *^^^ Roman System. 

of uniformity, to conform to the practice of the West, 
and his instructions are universally followed." 

Our information about the matter is almost wholly 
derived from Eusebius.^ His narrative contradicts 
the accounts given by the cardinal at every important 
point. There was the difference stated between the 
East and the West. Several synods were held, some 
in the East and some in the West, upon the matter, 
and they recommended the Western custom. But 
the bishops of Asia Minor, who followed the custom 
which they had received from the apostle John, sent 
a letter to Victor and the Roman Church defending 
themselves for persevering in their ancient practice. 
There was no '' reference " of the matter to Victor. 
This bishop did not '' direct " them " to conform," 
but he excommunicated " the parishes of all Asia 
. ... as heterodox." This was, of course, nothing 
of the nature of a modern Roman excommunication. 
Any bishop might excommunicate any church, and 
such an act simply meant that he and his church 
refused to have communion with the designated 
church. It naturally implied a recommendation to 
other churches to do the same, but nothing more 
than a recommendation. In a similar fashion, many 
northern Congregational churches before the civil war 
in America renounced communion with slaveholders 
and slaveholding churches, without assuming any 
farther authority over them, or indeed any authority 
whatever. But even if Victor's " excommunication " 
had been one of the modern Roman sort, it had a 

1 Eccl. Hist., Bk. v., chap, xxiii.-xxv. See also Socrates, Eccl. Hist., 
Bk. v., chap. xxii. 



Supremacy of the Pope, 125 

curious outcome for a pope, if Victor really had been 
a pope in the Catholic sense ; for other bishops did 
not approve of his course, though agreeing with 
him upon the controversy, and Irenseus of Lyons 
'' sharply rebuked " him. It is pretty clear that Vic- 
tor withdrew his excommunication, and certain that 
the friendly councils of other bishops gradually 
brought about an agreement upon the Western 
practice. If the pope did proceed by way of au- 
thority, he sadly blundered, and no such conformity 
to his '* instructions " as the cardinal affirms can be 
found in the records of Eusebius or other original 
authorities. Again, the only authority for the car- 
dinal's view of the episode is his own previous opin- 
ion as to what must have taken place, since Victor 
was '' pope," not the historical evidence as to what 
did take place. 

3. '' Dionysius, bishop of Rome, about the middle 
of the third century, having heard that the patriarch 
of Alexandria erred on some points of faith, demands 
an explanation of the suspected prelate, who, in 
obedience to his superior, promptly vindicates his 
own orthodoxy .^^ This sounds quite hierarchical ; 
but the original account of the matter, which we find 
in Athanasius, "On the Opinion of Dionysius,'^ § 13, 
has quite another sound. Athanasius says : ^ " The 
bishop Dionysius having heard of the affairs in the 
Pentapolis, and having written, in zeal for religion, 
as I said above, his letter to Euphranor and Ammon- 
ius against the heresy of Sabellius, some of the 

1 According to the translation in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 
second series, vol. iv., p. i8i. 



126 The Roman System, 

brethren belonging to the Church, of right opinions, 
but without asking him, so as to learn from himself 
how he had written, went up to Rome ; and they 
spoke against him in the presence of his namesake 
Dionysius the bishop of Rome. And he, upon hear- 
ing it, wrote simultaneously against the partisans of 
Sabellius and against those who held the very opin- 
ions for uttering which Arius had been cast out of the 

Church And he wrote also to Dionysius to 

inform him of what they had said about him. And 
the latter straightway wrote back, and inscribed his 
books 'A Refutation and a Defense.^ '^ Dionysius 
of Rome acts in no other way than any one inter- 
ested in the truth might act in any day, even our 
own ; and Dionysius of Alexandria does nothing but 
what any man zealous for his good name would do. 
Of " demanding an explanation,'^ and of " obedience 
to a superior,'^ there is not a whisper. The impor- 
tance of these considerations, and the impossibility 
of the interpretation of the event which the cardinal 
gives, are the more evident when we remember that 
it was but a little earlier when Cyprian was remarking 
that the bishop of Rome was in " error in endeavor- 
ing to maintain the cause of heretics against Chris- 
tians and against the Church of God,'' ^ and Firmilian 
of Caesarea was turning back upon him the epithets 
which he had appHed to Cyprian, of '* false Christ" 
and " false apostle " and " deceitful worker." ^ Such 
language is inconceivable in a Church governed as 
the Catholic theology maintains the primitive Church 
was, by the supremacy of Peter. 

1 Cyprian, Epistle Ixxiii. (Ixxiv.) i. ^ Ibid., Ixxiv. (Ixxv.). 



Supremacy of the Pope, 127 

4. An equally great distortion of the true historic 
picture is given in the following: *' St. Athanasius, 
the great patriarch of Alexandria, appeals in the 
fourth century to pope Juhus I. from an unjust de- 
cision rendered against him by the oriental bishops ; 
and the pope reverses the sentence of the Eastern 
council." The cardinal refers to Socrates, History, 
Bk. IL, chap, xv., from which we proceed to quote '} 
"Athanasius, meanwhile, after a lengthened journey, 
at last reached Italy." Other bishops also, " having 
been accused on various charges and expelled from 
their several churches, arrived at the imperial city. 
There each laid his case before JuHus, bishop of 
Rome. He on his part, by virtue of the Church of 
Rome's peculiar privilege, sent them back again into 
the East, fortifying them with commendatory letters ; 
and at the same time restored to each his own place, 
and sharply rebuked those by whom they had been 
deposed. Relying on the signature of the bishop 
Juhus, the bishops departed from Rome, and again 
took possession of their own churches, forwarding 
the letters to the parties to whom they were addressed. 
These persons, considering themselves treated with 
indignity by the reproaches of Julius, called a coun- 
cil at Antioch, assembled themselves, and dictated a 
reply to his letters as the expression of the unani- 
mous feeling of the whole synod. It was not his 
province, they said, to take cognizance of their de- 
cisions in reference to any whom they might wish 
to expel from their churches ; seeing that they had 

1 After the Nicejie and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. ii. 
p. 42. 



128 The Roman System, 

not opposed themselves to him when Novatus was 
ejected from the Church. These things the bishops 
of the Eastern Church communicated to Julius, bishop 
of Rome." 

If this is a case of the exercise of the " supremacy" 
of the bishop of Rome, it is a case of rebelHon against 
that supremacy, and is a poor case to quote as an ar- 
gument. But it is evident that the eastern bishops 
are repelling an interference for which they know no 
authority. What Julius attempted to do he did, in 
the words of Socrates, '' by virtue of the Church of 
Rome's peculiar privilege." Catholics would, no 
doubt, from their dogmatic standpoint, understand 
this of the inherent privilege of the papacy as the see 
of Peter. But history reveals several peculiar priv- 
ileges bestowed about this time upon the Roman 
bishop for special reasons. The Council of Sardica 
(347) g^^^ ^he right to ''Julius, bishop of Rome," in 
certain cases to order a case against a bishop who 
thought himself unjustly condemned to be reopened, 
and '' to appoint the judges." In other instances he 
could try a case again at Rome, in others send a pres- 
byter de latere, who should sit as his representative in a 
new trial.^ Damasus subsequently received from the 

1 The original Latin found in Gieseler, Kirchengeschichte , vol. i., J 94, 
note 7. When the vote was proposed, or, as we should say, motion 
made, it was in the form, " If it pleases you, let us honor the me7nory of 
the holy apostle Peter, that they who have examined the cause may 
write to Julius," etc. The tradition that Peter founded the Roman 
Church was long since current. Out of honor to him it is proposed to 
give Julius certain rights. If the original primacy of Peter were made 
out, the natural Roman interpretation, that the italicized phrase in- 
volves a recognition of the primacy, would stand. But here, again, the 
failure to understand the historical situation in the New Testament has 



Supremacy of, the Pope. 129 

emperor Valentinian certain judicial rights over 
schismatic clergymen. Of the exact provisions of 
the articles of Sardica no use seems to have been 
made. Julius' attempt in the present case was one 
much like those provided for. but it met with imme- 
diate rebuke. Thus the ''peculiar privilege" was of 
human and not divine origin, and it was one quite 
disputed. This case therefore gives no evidence of 
that original and undisputed jurisdiction which the 
cardinal seeks to make out in behalf of Rome. 

5. ''St. Basil, archbishop of Csesarea, in the same 
century, has recourse in his afflictions to the protec- 
tion of pope Damasus." 

The appeal of Basil to Damasus is that he will in- 
terfere by visitation to bring about peace amid the 
distraction under which the Church of the East was 
suffering in consequence of the spread of Arian views. 
There is not the slightest hint of an appeal to the 
official power of a pope over the Church, but the 
letter contains only a request for the fraternal serv- 
ices of one brother to another. If anything more 
than a reading of the letter were necessary to prove 
this point, the existence of another letter, addressed 
to the bishops of Italy and Gaul, and making pre- 
cisely the same request of them as was previously 
made of the one bishop of Rome, that they would 
visit Csesarea, would be enough. " We beseech you 

led to a misunderstanding of this historical situation. Besides, it 
should be remembered that the synod at the passing of this canon was 
composed of western bishops, the Orientals having seceded. It is 
thus, at best, far from a universal recognition of a generally acknowl- 
edged primacy. 



130 The Roman System. 

to send envoys to visit and comfort us in our afiflic- 
tion " is the burden of this letter, as it is of the first.^ 

6. '' St. John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, appeals in the beginning of the fifth century, 
to pope Innocent I. for a redress of grievances in- 
flicted on him by several eastern prelates, and by the 
empress Eudoxia of Constantinople." 

It is possible that in this letter we see one of the 
earliest of the instances of a real appeal to the pope 
to exercise judicial power over the Eastern Church. 
The confusion in the East led to the invoking of the 
first and only apostolic see in the West as protector 
and helper. The significant passage in the letter of 
Chrysostom to Innocent is as follows : ^ '' Therefore, 
to prevent such confusion overtaking the whole 
earth, yield to our entreaties that ye will signify by 
writing that these lawless transactions executed in 
our absence, and after hearing one side only, although 
we did not decline a trial, are invalid, as indeed they 
are by the very nature of the case, and that those 
who are convicted of having committed such iniqui- 
ties must be subjected to the penalty of the ecclesi- 
astical laws." ZoepffeP thinks that the quoted 
passage (in which the Latin reads, in addition to the 
text translated in the edition from which the quota- 
tion is made, " auctoritate vestra decernitel^ that is, 
" decide by your authority ") " admits no well-grounded 



1 These letters, too long to quote here, are now accessible to English 
readers in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. vii., 
pp. 166 and 283. They are the letters numbered LXX. and CCXLIII. 

2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. ix., p. 312. 

3 Herzog's Realencyclopcedie, vol. vi., p. 719. 



Supremacy of the Pope, 131 

doubt that the condemned patriarch of Constanti- 
nople invoked the papal decision as that of a higher 
court." But, as Schaff points out/ the letter to Inno- 
cent was also addressed to the bishops of Milan and 
Acquileia. In other writings Chrj^sostom calls the 
bishop of Antioch a successor of Peter, and says that 
Paul was of equal honor with Peter. And even the 
reply of Innocent ^ does not breathe the hierarchial 
spirit. He does not lay down the law, or give orders 
to restore Chrysostom. He says : " But what are 
we to do against such things at the present time ? 
A sy nodical decision of them is necessary, and we 
have long declared that a synod ought to be con- 
vened," etc. His reply is full of comforting words 
as of a brother, but the redress must be sought else- 
where, viz., in the synod. Certain it is that the 
" appeal " resulted in nothing, for Chrysostom died 
in exile. All this does not favor the argument of 
cardinal Gibbons. 

7. ''wSt. Cyril appeals to pope Celestine against 
Nestorius ; Nestorius also appeals to the same 
pontiff, who takes the side of Cyril." 

It is true that Cyril addressed himself to Celestine 
as to a judge over the whole Church ; but what such 
flattering words from an Oriental really meant we 
shall see later. 

8. " Theodoret, the illustrious historian and bishop 
of Cyrrhus, is condemned by the pseudo-council of 
Ephesus in 449, and appeals to pope Leo in the fol- 
lowing touching language : * I await the decision of 

1 Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. ix., p. 21. 

2 Ibidem, p. 313. 



132 The Roman System. 

your apostolic see, and I supplicate your holiness to 
succor me, who invoke your righteous and just tri- 
bunal, and to order me to hasten to you and to 
explain to you my teaching, which follows the steps 
of the apostles,' " etc., etc. 

These words '' decision," " tribunal," etc., have at 
first hearing something of the sound of an acknowl- 
edgment of the supremacy of the papacy. But closer 
examination of this very letter will remove this ap- 
pearance.^ It begins with a rehearsal of the reasons 
why *' it is fitting for you [the bishop of Rome] to 
hold the first place." These are, the size of the city 
of Rome, her sovereignty, her faith, her piety, her 
possession of the tombs of the apostles Peter and 
Paul, the person, character, and orthodoxy of the 
bishop, Leo. Not a word is uttered as to supremacy 
over the Church, which is indeed far from Theod- 
oret's thought. He wants vindication and advice 
as to what he would better do, not an authoritative 
papal decision. 

The two remaining cases cited by the cardinal, 
that of John, abbot of Constantinople, and that of 
Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, are both too 
late to have any argumentative value as to the orig- 
inal and primitive character of the claims of the 
papacy. The former belongs to the age of Gregory 
I., 590 to 604, the latter to that of Nicholas I., 858 to 
867. In respect to Photius It will be enough to note 
that, although Nicholas in his reply did assume the 
lofty tone which characterizes the mediaeval papacy, 

' Theodoret's Letters, CXI 1 1., Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, second 
series, vol. iii., p. 293. 



Supremacy of the Pope, 133 

and attempt to 'Mecide" matters, the simple result, 
which was not mere disobedience, but utter separa- 
tion between the Latin and Greek Churches, which 
has never been more than nominally healed from 
that day to this, and now exists in full force, is 
enough to show that there was not then, as there 
never had been, any concession on the part of the 
Eastern Church of the primacy of the bishop of 
Rome over them. The subsequent efforts at union 
with the Greek Church have all split upon the same 
rock. The pope has assumed rights which the 
Greeks would not admit. As already said, in an- 
other connection, the schism of the Greek Church is 
the direct result of the unwarranted and intolerable 
assumptions of the papacy. The aggressor has been 
Rome, and the instrument of offense has been the 
unfounded claim of supreme jurisdiction. This claim 
is what has made Rome not the mother of churches, 
but the mother of schism. 

Thus far the cardinal's argument from the his- 
tory of appeals to Rome. Lack of space will com- 
pel us to omit the remaining argument, which is 
derived from the alleged testimony of such fathers 
as " Basil, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, 
Ambrose, and Leo ;" from the ecumenical councils ; 
and from the history of missions. Most of the points 
here made have been already noticed, and will be 
noticed again. They all rest upon the same funda- 
mental misunderstanding of the history of the Church, 
which has been repeatedly revealed in our examina- 
tions. The most complete and the unanswerable 
refutation of the general claim that the popes had 



134 ^'^^ Roman System. 

supreme jurisdiction over the Christian Church from 
the beginning, is the plain tale of what actually oc- 
curred and how, historically, the papacy was created. 
With a brief sketch of this history we shall close our 
argument upon this point. 

§ 71. Historical View of the Development of 
THE Papacy. About the time of the Council of Nice 
(325) the metropolitan system of the early Church 
was fully developed. That system made the ordi- 
nary bishops subject in certain respects to the bishops 
of their principal cities, the " metropolitans," but 
among these latter, and among the bishops of the 
so-called " apostohc " sees, Jerusalem, Alexandria, 
Antioch, Rome, etc., including later, by a stretch of 
the word apostolic, Constantinople, there was perfect 
equaHty. Not an historical trace of the supremacy 
claimed for the bishop of Rome can be found in the 
documents which have come down to us from this 
time. 

Circumstances, however, favored the gradual de- 
velopment of a supremacy of a certain sort in the 
bishopric of Rome. The location of this bishopric in 
the imperial city, the head of the civilized world, gave 
it a kind of headship over all other churches. When, 
later, Constantinople became the real imperial city, 
the "new Rome," she was declared to have a rank 
second only to that of the Church of " old Rome." 
Thus the two cities were brought into comparison, 
but the situation of the elder city gradually decided 
in her favor. While the bishop of Constantinople 
was at the court of the empire, and was often sub- 
jected to humiliating treatment in the various 



History of the Papacy. 135 

changes which occurred with so great frequency 
and violence in that excitable East, the bishop of 
Rome, in his dignified isolation, maintained his 
character largely unaffected by all these disturb- 
ances. In the East, too, Constantinople had to 
share its honors with Alexandria, a rival city, which 
was anxious often to gain the support of the capital 
city in its behalf, and so repeatedly appealed for 
countenance, and always with flattering words and 
after the self-abasing style of oriental diplomacy, 
i \o Rome. Soon one of these two cities was sub- 
merged under the wave of conquest which came up 
out of the deserts of Arabia, and ultimately the other 
also, so that Rome was left alone among bishoprics 
that could maintain any claim whatever to apostolic 
authority. Meantime, as the one apostolic see of the 
West, Rome had naturally and easily extended her 
jurisdiction there, and thus at last stood forth, in fact 
as well as in theory, the only great see exercising a 
real and noteworthy authority over any considerable 
portion of the Christian world. 

When we come to look more carefully at the his- 
tory of the papacy in the West we shall see that its 
development was by no means entirely the result of 
unworthy efforts and the outcome of illegitimate proc- 
esses. It was rather, looked at in the large, the 
result of the complete identification of the spirit of 
the papacy with the spirit of the age during which it 
was growing up. The careful student of history will 
have occasion to note many tokens of the merit of 
the papacy and of its historical necessity as a ruling 
force in the turbulent times in which its lot was cast. 



136 The Roman System, 

Thus the history of the papacy will lead to respect 
for it as an institution, while exhibiting its purely 
human origin. If it could have been abandoned 
when it was outgrown, the verdict of history in its 
behalf would be very largely, if not entirely, favor- 
able. And could it be maintained as an advantage 
to the Church rather than as a divine institution and 
a dogmatic necessity, it might have much to say for 
itself But it has chosen to perpetuate itself and to 
claim for itself permanent and supreme jurisdiction. 
Its dogmatic claims are what the historical scholar 
can only and forever deny. 

The general history of Italy between the years 
410 and 754 gives the explanation of the growth of 
the papacy, considered as a creditable and necessary 
political institution. From the first of these dates, 
which is that of the sack of Rome, down to the latter, 
which is that of the journey of pope Stephen to the 
court of the Franks to implore help against the bar- 
barous rule of the Lombards, which had grown 
intolerable, Italy was the scene of almost uninter- 
rupted confusion. The government of the Roman 
emperor, which had been for sixty years nothing but 
a name, ceased to be even this in 476. It was within 
this period of hastening destruction that Leo I. was 
bishop of Rome (440-461). He became the prin- 
cipal figure upon the stage. His career did much 
to establish the claims of the papacy to supremacy, 
but this was because he proved himself to be the 
only man in Italy worthy of taking the lead in those 
troublous times. When the emperor had failed to 
deliver the city or to maintain the state, when the 



History of the Papacy, 137 

corrupt and moribund civilization of the past could 
furnish no virile and commanding force to dominate 
the situation, that new and powerful society, the 
Christian Church, which contained the moral force 
of the people and alone had within it the promise of 
a future, was compelled to come forth and take con- 
trol. It was because Leo represented this com- 
munity, and was himself the greatest man among 
the ItaHans of his day, that he rose by a kind of 
moral levitation, as real as any physical gravitation, 
to the summit of the age. Still more marked was 
the secular work of Gregory I. It was because the 
proper officers of the city government had failed in 
their immemorial duty of feeding the poor that the 
bishop of Rome, who alone possessed, in the now 
widespread and rich estates of the Church, the 
means of performing the work, was compelled to 
gather food and distribute to the needy. This was 
a secular function, and it accustomed the world to 
the sight of the pope regularly administering secular 
offices. Hence it was but a short step to the other 
functions of government, to making peace with bar- 
barians (584 and 599) and thus to acting as the real 
representative of the old imperial power. We see in 
these events the beginning of the temporal power 
of the popes. It had its origin in the wealth and 
the preeminence of the pope as an individual, in the 
weakness of the empire and its inability to perform 
its necessary functions, in the superiority of the 
Church to the barbarians in intellectual culture and 
civilization, in the moral force of Christianity, and in 
the youthful vigor of a new and well-organized insti- 



138 The Roman System, 

tution. The papacy could scarcely fail to become 
the cynosure of Italy and of all Europe. 

Even such a combination of circumstances favoring 
its growth could not have carried the papacy to the 
point it attained if there had not been an idea underly- 
ing the conduct of the popes and determining their 
course at critical moments. This vital element was in- 
troduced by Leo I. in the adoption from some of his 
predecessors of that interpretation of the text, Matt, 
xvi. 18, which has since become the standard Roman 
interpretation, upon which Leo built up the theory 
of the supremacy of Peter among the apostles and 
of his successors the bishops of Rome among the 
other bishops of the Church. Even Gregory, 
who refused the title of " universal bishop " and 
blamed the bishop of Constantinople for adopting 
it, meant nothing less by his *' servant of the servants 
of God " than did Leo by his universal episcopate by 
divine right ; and in all his conduct Gregory showed 
that he v/as fully animated by the papal idea. As 
the temporal power became larger, and as the papacy 
became more and more involved in the general 
affairs of the empire and of Europe, it was natural 
that this idea should assume more and more impor- 
tance in the minds of the popes and become a larger 
and larger element in determining their course. It 
reached the highest point in the famous utterance of 
Boniface VIII. that '' it is necessary to salvation that 
every creature should be subject to the Roman 
pontiff." Its importance in all this development can 
scarcely be overestimated. 

This dogmatic idea, however mistaken it must be 



Ignoble Elements. 139 

regarded, was one of the more noble elements deter- 
mining the development of the papacy. But there 
were ignoble elements also. Common human ambi- 
tion played no small part. Most striking is the dip- 
lomatic ability with which, through the long series 
of ages in which this colossal power was develop- 
ing, advantage was taken of every circumstance 
that could aggrandize it. Every success was 
held in the tenacious memory of succeeding gen- 
erations to become at the proper time the means 
of furthering some new pretension. Every failure 
was forgotten as soon as possible. The flattering ex- 
pressions of oriental insincerity were taken at their full 
face value as sober expressions of undeniable truth. 
The single purpose of the popes made their policy firm 
and consistent, while other princes were vacillating and 
uncertain. They had few or no conflicting relations 
and interests. Nor was this ambitious diplomacy over- 
scrupulous. Everything was grist that came to the 
Roman mill. From the time that Zosimus quoted to 
the African bishops the canons of Sardica in reference 
to appeals to Rome as Nicene canons, and from the 
free and effective use which Nicholas I. made of the 
pseudo-Isidorian Decretals in support of the Roman 
authority in France, down even to the Protestant 
Reformation, forgeries have played an important part 
in the armory of papal offensive weapons. The 
slippery historical methods of which we have already 
seen so many examples began at an early date, for 
Innocent I. (402-417) transferred the rights conferred 
upon the person of Julius I. by the Council of Sardica 
to the papal chair as such, and converted the privi- 



140 The Roman System. 

lege there given of recourse to the bishop of Rome 
into the obligation to. bring all ^' causce majores'' 
before the papal court. So much fraud is to be de- 
tected throughout the history of the papacy that the 
student is, in fact, in danger of referring all the forces 
which contributed to the erection of the great edifice 
to the realm of evil and deceit, and of completely ignor- 
ing the larger and more worthy considerations to 
which full allusion has already been made. It was not 
all evil ; but there was so much evil mixed with the 
indifferent and the good that the merely human 
origin of the papacy and its entire lack of all divine 
justification and authorization can only be denied 
when one willfully shuts his eyes to evidence, or else 
blindly trusts to mendacious and misleading authority. 
§ 72. The Papacy and the State. The Roman 
theory of the relations of Church and State com- 
prises two particulars, that of the absolute inde- 
pendence of the Church from the State, and that of 
the absolute dependence of the State upon the 
Church. The applications of the former principle in 
Europe^ have comparatively little importance for 
Americans, so different are the conditions under a 
government which recognizes no church and trou- 
bles itself in no way about the internal affairs of any 
communion. Thus the Roman Church may publish 
her canons in her own way, without regard to the 
State. In merely ecclesiastical matters the secular 
courts do not trouble themselves about the decrees 
of ecclesiastical courts. Many things are conceded 
by custom, and according to the generous principle 

1 See Delitzsch, Lehrsystem, p. 270 ff. 



Temporal Pozver, 141 

that all churches, as the bulwarks of morals and so 
of prosperity, are to be encouraged, which would 
never be granted of right. Thus the CathoHc Church 
receives immunity from taxation in most States of the 
Union ; in time of w^ar her clergymen are not ordi- 
narily compelled to serve in the army, and were they 
compelled they might easily find a place among the 
chaplains or in the charitable service. But in fact 
and in theory every Catholic clergyman, like every 
other citizen, would be held in case of necessity to 
the strict performance of all civil and military duty, 
and would be compelled to answer to the civil courts 
for any civil offense. No other point of view is con- 
ceivable for an American. 

§ 73. Among the consequences of the theory that 
the Church is absolutely independent of the State is 
the theory of the necessity of the temporal power of 
the pope. Cardinal Gibbons maintains^ that the 
temporal power is necessary for the *' independence 
and freedom of the pope in the government of the 
Church. The holy father must be either a sovereign 
or a subject. There is no medium. If a subject, he 
might become either the pliant creature, if God 
would so permit, of his royal master, like the schis- 
matic patriarch of Constantinople, who, as Gibbon 
observed, was ' a domestic slave under the eye of his 
master, at whose nod he passed from the convent to 
the throne, ai)d from the throne to the convent' 
. . . Or, what is far more probable, the pope might 
become a virtual prisoner in his own house, as the 
present illustrious pontiff [Pius IX.] is at this mo- 

1 F. F., p. 172 ff. 



142 The Roman System, 

ment [1876]." The necessity of constant communi- 
cation with all parts of Christendom, which might be 
interrupted by war, if the pope were not a sovereign, 
is also emphasized in the following context. 

How long the obstinacy of the papal policy, bur- 
dened as it is with the implications of the doctrine of 
infallibility, may endure and maintain the theory that 
the temporal power is a necessity, and that the pope 
is a '' prisoner," it is impossible to say. But it would 
seem as if the logic of facts would compel a change. 
The papacy finds ways of excusing inevitable changes 
both of idea and of policy. The continued and large 
success of Leo XIII. in conducting the affairs of the 
Church without any temporalities, and the perfect 
freedom which the papal Church has in fact enjoyed 
in Italy since the fatal days when the temporal power 
went down before the progress of a united Italy, 
will finally relegate the claim that sovereignty is 
essential, to the lumber of the garret. In so far as 
Catholics believe in the truth of their system they 
will be ready to trust it to the free conflict with other 
systems which it has in the United States, and which 
it will have to accept ere long throughout the whole 
world. And Protestantism, in its eager opposition 
to what it deems essential error in the papacy, asks 
for nothing more. ** The truth is mighty and will 
prevail." 

§ 74. The second of the two principles mentioned 
under this head, that of the absolute dependence of 
the State upon the Church, is more important. It 
received its most distinct enunciation in the famous 
bull of Boniface VIII., Unam Sanctarn, This bull, 



The Bull^ Unam Sanctam. 143 

closing with the formula, " We declare, say, define, 
and pronounce," is indisputably an ex cathedra 
utterance of the papal see,^ and hence is determina- 
tive of doctrine and practice, and of vital importance 
to an understanding of the claims of the papacy and 
of its possible dangers to liberty. 

The most important parts of this bull are the fol- 
lowing : " We are compelled to believe with urgent 
faith and to hold one holy catholic and apostolic 
Church. Therefore the one and only Church has 
one body and one head, not two heads like a mon- 
ster, viz., Christ and the vicar of Christ, Peter and 
Peter's successor. We are instructed by the Gospels 
that there are in his power two swords, viz., the 
spiritual and the temporal. For when the apostles 
said ' Behold, here are two swords ' (Luke xxii. 38)^ 
viz., in the Church : when the apostles said so, the Lord 
did not respond, ' There are too many,' but ' Enough.* 
Certainly, he who denies that there is in the power 
of Peter a temporal sword has paid poor attention to 
the word of the Lord, who said, ' Put up the sword 
into the sheath' (John xviii. 11). Therefore both are 
in the power of the Church, both the spiritual and 
the material sword. But this is to be wielded for the 
Church, that by the Church ; that by the hand of 
the priest, this by the hand of kings and soldiers, 
but at the nod and patience of the priest. Moreover, 
sword should be under sword, and the temporal 
authority should be subject to the spiritual; for 

1 So even Cardinal Hergenrother, as to the concluding sentence. 
See in Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 278. And so Bishop Fessler, see Little- 
dale, Plain Reasons, p. 13. 



144 The Roman System, 

when the apostle says, * There is no power except 
from God; the powers which be are ordained of 
God' (Rom. xiii. i); they are not ordained except 
sword be under sword. For on the testimony of 
truth, the spiritual power has to institute the earthly, 
and to judge it, if it is not good. Thus the prophecy 
of Jeremiah concerning the Church and the ecclesi- 
astical power is verified, ^ Behold, I have this day set 
thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,' etc. 
(Jer. i. lo). Therefore, if the earthly power deviates 
from the way, it shall be judged by the spiritual 
power ; if the inferior spiritual power deviates, by its 
superior spiritual ; but if the supreme, by God alone, 
since it cannot be judged by man, on the testimony 
of the apostle, 'The spiritual man judgeth all things, 
but is himself judged of no man' (i Cor. ii. 15). 
Whoever, therefore, resists this power, thus ordained 
by God, resists the ordination of God ; unless he 
feigns that there are two principles, like Manichaeus, 
which we judge false and heretical, because, on the 
testimony of Moses, God did not create the heavens 
and the earth in several principles but in one princi- 
ple (Gen. i. i). Then, to be subject to the Roman 
pontiff we declare, say, define, and pronounce to be 
absolutely necessary to every human creature to 
salvation." ^ 

It was the more important to quote this remark- 
able bull at some length, since its own utterances are its 
best refutation. Who would recognize the texts 
which are cited in the distortion of this papal exegesis ? 

1 After the texts of Gieseler {^KG.^ vol. ii., g 59, note 26), and De- 
litzsch, op. cit., p. 277. 



Toleration, 145 

Not one of them refers to the subject for which it 
is quoted or bears the construction put upon it. Nor 
is the bull a mere fossil, a relic of mediaeval darkness, 
a repudiated and worthless monument of a position 
long since abandoned. It is cathedratic, and this 
fact, were there not so many ways of evading uncom- 
fortable cathedratic decisions, would make it a per- 
manent power. Then, it has been made modern, and 
reenforced by other cathedratic decisions of the 
present day, as, for example, that of Pius IX. in the 
famous Syllabus of Errors, in which he condemns 
religious toleration,^ and declares that in case of 
conflict the spiritual law is supreme over the civil.^ 
And so the leading curiahsts of the present day. 

§ 75. Cardinal Gibbons undertakes the difficult 
task of exhibiting the Roman Church as the friend 
of liberty and of toleration.^ His misrepresentations 
of history here are as frequent as elsewhere. It will 
be impossible to dwell upon them, but time may be 
taken to note his definition of religious liberty. He 
says : " A man enjoys rehgious liberty when he pos- 
sesses the free right of worshiping God according to 
the dictates of a right conscience, and of practicing a 
form of religion most in accordance with his duties 
to God." Yes, but what is a '^ right " conscience ? 
And who is to decide what are a man's *' duties to 
God " ? Rome claims to make these decisions, and 
under this definition there could therefore be no re- 
ligious liberty for Protestants. Religious liberty is, 
therefore, quite in distinction from the cardinal's view, 

^ See Schaff's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 232. 2 Jbid.^ p. 223. 

3 F.F., p. 264. 
10 



146 The Roman System. 

only enjoyed when a man has the free right to 
worship God according to the dictates of his oivn 
conscience. And this reHgious hberty Rome has 
never been wilHng to grant. 

§ ^6. It is in immediate connection with the su- 
premacy of the Church over the State that Rome 
claims the right of directing the schools of every na- 
tion, including our own. Pius IX. condemns the prop- 
osition that '' the best theory of civil society requires 
that popular schools open to the children of all 
classes, and generally all public institutes intended 
for instruction in letters and philosophy and for con- 
ducting the education of the young, should be freed 
from all ecclesiastical authority, government, and 
interference, and should be fully subjected to the 
civil and political power, in conformity with the will 
of rulers and the prevalent opinions of the age." ^ 
Hence the struggle that has arisen in the United 
States, which can never be settled except by the 
Church's or the State's abandonment of the right to 
govern. The Church cannot abandon her claims 
without involving her entire existence. It would be 
to surrender her theory of the Church and her doc- 
trine of infallibility, and to run the risk also of a 
free and candid examination of her claims on the part 
of her own children under guidance not ecclesiastical. 
She cannot do this in the one realm or the other, in 
that of theory or of practice. She needs her theory 
to maintain her hold upon her people, and she must 
educate her children from the beginning in her own 
peculiar way of interpreting history and nature, or she 

\ Schaff's Creeds, vol. ii., p. 224. 



The Public Schools, 147 

is lost. The conflict about the schools is therefore an 
irreconcilable one. Neither the State nor the Church 
of Rome can yield. And hence the free school is 
destined to be the great means in the future, as it 
has been in the past, of breaking up the dominion of 
the Church. It is the misfortune of Rome, for 
which she alone bears the fault, that she cannot 
endure the full light of day. If she could, she would 
have nothing to fear from the public schools. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY WITHIN THE CHURCH. 

§ TJ. We have now arrived in the progress of 
this discussion at the last topic under the general 
head of the Catholic doctrine of the Church, and find 
ourselves still face to face with the question of the 
authority of the Church. Upon that authority, as we 
have already seen, depends the force of all the ar- 
guments which have been advanced for the marks of 
the Church, its unity, catholicity, etc. When the 
authority of the Church was found to be reduced to 
the authority of the papacy, it was seen that this 
depended, in the last analysis, upon the authority of 
the Church which has proclaimed it. The authority 
of the papacy is only the form under which the 
authority of the Church now appears. Thus, as she 
fronts a hostile world, the Church claims all author- 
ity for herself, and asserts the papal authority to be 
that authority. But when she considers herself 
apart from the world, when she asks herself what is 
the source of her authority, when she seeks guidance 
and gives utterance to her own homage before right- 
ful authority, what does she acknowledge under 
God, and as the instrument of conveying the divine 
will, to be the ultimate authority to herself? 

§ 78. The answer to this question might seem to 
be given in the first doctrinal decree (apart from the 
repetition of the Apostles' Creed) which was set 
X43 



Tradition. 149 

forth by the Council of Trent. The council here 
acknowledges that all saving truth and moral disci- 
pline flow from the same fountain, which is the 
gospel, and affirms that ''this truth and discipline 
are contained in the written books and the unwritten 
traditions which, received by the apostles from the 
mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles them- 
selves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down 
even unto us." ^ The " gospel " is then the source 
of authority for the Church herself, and this is con- 
tained in Scripture and tradition. Later on in the 
same paragraph the council expressly affirms that 
the traditions {traditiones ipsas . . . dictatas) have 
been dictated by Christ or by the Holy Ghost. 
Thus Scripture and tradition are put upon the same 
level as the sources of doctrine. With the acknowl- 
edgment of the Scripture, Protestants have no quar- 
rel ; but the question immediately and necessarily 
arises. In what sense, and to what extent, is tradition 
placed side by side with Scripture ? and, since there 
can be but one ultimate appeal, which of the two is 
this, Scripture or tradition ? 

§ 79. The Ideal. It is a very natural and appar- 
ently a harmless supposition, which the Council of 
Trent seems to have made, that there were once in 
the Church traditions of the teachings of Christ 
which were never incorporated in the written Scrip- 
tures, but which have nevertheless been preserved 
and handed down to us. Historically, it is true, 
such traditions do not seem to have been preserved 
to any appreciable extent. Eusebius tried to collect 

1 Schaff, Creeds, etc., ii., p. 80. 



150 The Roman System, 

such as were still current in his day, but his labor 
met with little reward. Mohler, with his constant 
tendency to lift upon an ideal plane the themes he 
treats, makes tradition to consist in the universal 
consciousness of the Church. He says : ^ '^ What is 
tradition then ? The peculiar Christian sense exist- 
ing in the Church and propagated by church educa- 
tion, which, however, is not to be conceived without 
its content, which has, rather, been formed in and 
through its content, so that it should be called a 
sense with a definite content. Tradition is the word, 
continually living in the hearts of the faithful. The 
interpretation of the Scriptures is intrusted to this 
sense as a common and universal sense. The ex- 
planation given in any disputed case is the judgment 
of the Church, and the Church is therefore judge in 
affairs of the faith. Tradition in the objective sense 
is the universal faith of the Church through all the 
centuries, accessible in objective historical witnesses. 
In this sense is tradition generally called the norm, 
the standard of scriptural interpretation." The same 
idealizing tendency prevails with other Roman 
writers. While some have referred various pecuHar- 
ities of the system, such as the number of the sacra- 
ments (seven), the necessity of infant baptism, the 
doctrine of purgatory, prayers for the dead, the wor- 
ship of the saints, etc., to a distinct tradition from the 
time of the apostles, others, in the utter lack of evi- 
dence for such a position, have referred such doc- 
trines and practices to the present inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, to the continuous existence in the 

^ Symbolik, p, 356. 



Ideal of Tradition, 15 1 

Church of the mind of Christ. Not every writer has 
been able to reason like the Jesuit Kilber, who 
wrote : '' There are approved doctrines in the Catholic 
Church for which there is either no word of Scripture, 
or at least no clear word ; consequently there must be 
for such doctrines a word of God handed down by 
tradition ; consequently there are divine traditions." ^ 
The Council of Trent supposed that Scripture and 
tradition were both of apostolic origin, the Scriptures 
furnishing only a partial deposit of the teaching of 
Christ. But the tendency of the Church has been to 
leave this untenable position and to identify tradition 
with those deliverances of the Church in decretal, 
bull, syllabus, or conciliar decision, by which the 
Church has set forth its understanding of the truth. 
And thus, finally, tradition comes to mean the formu- 
lated teaching of the Church, possessing divine au- 
thority because of the authority of the Church, and 
forming the norm even for the interpretation of the 
Scriptures. Ultimately, therefore, the principle of 
the Catholic Church in distinction from Protestant- 
ism is tradition, as that of Protestantism is the Scrip- 
tures. 

It is a further part of the Roman ideal that there 
is a perfect agreement between tradition and Scrip- 
ture. *^The demand of the Church," says Mohler,^ 
"that the Scriptures should be interpreted accord- 
ing to her rule of faith, agrees perfectly with the 
demands of historico-grammatical interpretation, and 
the most successful interpretation of this sort will 
reproduce most perfectly her doctrines The 

1 See Delitzsch, op, cit., p. 298. 2 Qp^ cit., p. 388. 



15^ The Roman System, 

interpreter who is in other respects the most skillful 
and successful, will, when supported by her standard, 
become precisely the most distinguished." Thus, 
while the exigencies of controversy have led the 
Roman apologists into a discussion of the defects of 
the Scriptures considered as the sole standard of 
faith, it is only just to them to say that the Catholic 
Church has never intended, whatever may be the 
practical effect of her positions, to throw disrespect 
upon the Scriptures. 

§ 80. The Protestant reply to these positions is a 
various one. When emphasis has been put upon 
the original unwritten tradition, it has been met with 
denial. No such tradition actually exists. When 
tradition is defined, as Mohler defines it, as the com- 
mon sense of the Church, modern Protestants have 
not been inclined to deny the existence of such a 
sense, or to refuse it a place in the determination of 
truth, under the name of Christian experience, or of 
Christian consciousness, or, when most carefully 
employed, of the verdict of the history of doctrine. 
But this is far from placing it upon a level with the 
Scriptures. When, however, the tradition advocated 
is clearly identified with the infallible teaching office 
of the Church, as is expressly done by Heinrich in 
his general and formal definition of tradition as such,^ 
then Protestants have only the answer to give which 
has already been presented under the head of the 
infallibility of the Church, that such infallibility is 
not a fact. But the distinctive reply to this claim of 
the Roman Church is still sharper. That Church 

^ Dog. Theol.^ ii., p. 10. 



Scripture and Tradition, 153 

puts tradition upon a complete level, or, better, she 
makes the Scriptures only the written and specially 
inspired word of God, while all tradition, both scrip- 
tural and other, possesses the same character of 
divine authority and infallibility. Thus there is not 
so much the harmony of parallehsm between the 
two as that of identity. The Scriptures are, in fact, 
only one form of the tradition. Hence there is and 
must be, according to the CathoHc position, perfect 
agreement between the doctrines drawn by the 
Church from tradition and the Scriptures. But this 
harmony, Protestants say, does not exist. The char- 
acteristic doctrines of the Roman Church are con- 
trary to Scripture. And hence, if they are founded 
upon tradition, it must be upon a false tradition. Or, 
in other words, the tradition of the Catholic Church 
is not what it is claimed to be, a pure source of 
Christian doctrine. 

With this reply we shall content ourselves for the 
present. We are still in the region of the formal. 
We have not touched the material doctrines of the 
Church, and it is in that material sphere that the 
falsity of the claims of Rome grows finally perfectly 
clear. If the Roman system of doctrines were a 
perfectly true system, consistent with the Bible and 
with all other knowledge, then the claims of the 
Church which alone sets them forth to possess infal- 
lible divine authority would derive very great weight 
from that fact, would in truth become irresistible. 
But such is not the case, as will be shown in the 
review of the peculiar doctrines of the system one by 
one. Meantime, a further reason for rejecting the 



154 'The Roma7t System. 

doctrine of tradition will be found in the treatment 
of the Scriptures which the Catholic Church exhibits, 
and which is the apparent result of her doctrine of 
tradition. 

§ 8 1. The Catholic Doctrine of the Scrip- 
tures. We shall follow here in our review the dis- 
cussion of Heinrich/ which is exceeding full and 
able. In defining the relations of tradition and 
Scripture he places the two upon an equality of 
purity and reliability. But tradition has the advan- 
tage of being the '* original, universally vaHd, inde- 
pendent, and sufficient means of the communication 
of revealed truth.'' The Scriptures, which were later 
added to the oral tradition, are not sufficient to bring 
us to belief of the truth, because they require the 
help of tradition to attest them, interpret them, and 
supplement them. But the Scripture has certain ad- 
vantages of its own. It is inspired, and consequently 
is the word of God in an eminent sense. Upon the 
basis of the expressions used by the Council of 
Trent, Heinrich goes on to develop what would be 
called among Protestants a " high " doctrine of in- 
spiration. Trent said that the Scriptures were writ- 
ten under the '' dictation " of the Holy Spirit, and 
that God was thus their " author." Heinrich conse- 
quently teaches that " the entire Scripture in all its 
parts, and in the minutest particular, is the work, of 
God." " Nothing is in it but what was written under 
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and according to 
his will and purpose." '' The sacred WTiters not 
only wrote the contents, thoughts, truth, and sense 

1 Dog. TheoL, i., pp. 699-822. 



Doctrine of the Scriptures. 155 

which God designed, but they also did this i7t the 
form and with the expressions which met the purpose 
of God and the needs of those to whom the Scripture 
was addressed." ** Therefore its entire contents, in 
every relation, are divinely true, in consequence of 
the divine inspiration." Heinrich expressly rejects 
the '' opinion of many modern authors " that only 
the religious and moral contents of the Bible are in- 
spired. Such a view is unworthy of the dignity of 
revelation and unsuitable to the necessities of men. 
With this general conception of inspiration most 
Protestants would be very well content. Certainly 
there is no necessity of condemning Heinrich's doc- 
trine in the name of historic Protestantism. But he 
departs from all agreement with, and will lose all 
sympathy from, any portion of the Protestant world 
when he extends the same inspiration to the apoc- 
ryphal books of the Old Testament. 

It is evidently an inconsistency of Heinrich's when, 
though he presents so high a doctrine of the Scripture, 
making it so especial a manifestation of the providen- 
tial care of God for the Church, he falls in, though 
only in passing, with the common CathoHc argu- 
ment : The Church existed before the Scriptures, and 
hence can exist without them. It is by no means 
certain that it can exist without them. At any rate, 
God has given them to the Church, and as a fact it 
has existed under their constant influence. We may 
leave unfounded suppositions as to what it could do 
to take care of themselves. It is, however, a keen 
turn when Heinrich argues directly from inspiration 
to the necessity of tradition in the interpretation of 



156 The Rommt System. 

the Bible. '' It follows that the Scripture, as it has 
been inspired by the Holy Ghost, can be infallibly 
interpreted only by the Holy Ghost through his 
organ, the Church." But we fear that the argument 
will never have a greater merit than its verbal clever- 
ness. What difficulty is there, in the nature of 
things, preventing the Holy Spirit from infallibly in- 
terpreting the Scripture to any single Christian, 
which does not also prevent him from communicat- 
ing the infallible interpretation to the Church, since 
it can be communicated to the Church, which is 
composed of men, only through some man ? The 
pope himself is still a man ; and it is not credible that 
God can have any access to the pope's mind which 
he has not to mine. But, further, what evidence is 
there that there either is or need be any infallible in- 
terpretation whatsoever ? 

§ 82. Heinrich proceeds to a threatening attack 
upon the Protestant principle of the Scriptures when 
he maintains that even the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures cannot be certainly proved except by the help 
of tradition. But the danger is at once modified by 
the concession that "some sort of a natural cer- 
tainty, at least as concerns genuineness and integrity, 
and even a probabiHty as to the inspiration of the 
Scripture, is possible even without the supernatural 
and infallible authority of the Church.'' Here, again, 
the cleft between Protestantism and Catholicism 
comes to view. Protestants desire only such a rea- 
sonable probability as to religious matters as shall 
give them good grounds for believing and acting 
upon the truth of the Bible, and are content to wait 



Tradition not Necessary, 157 

for absolute certainty. Reasonableness gives knowl- 
edge. Nor do they see how absolute certainty is to 
be obtained by arguments which are so far from 
absolute as those by which Rome maintains her 
*' infallible teaching authority." But Heinrich pro- 
ceeds. No writing can prove its own genuineness 
and incorruptness, but must always have the proof 
which a living tradition alone can give. Much more 
is this true of such a point as inspiration. True, 
weighty indications and probable arguments favor 
inspiration, such as the wonderful agreement of the 
Old and New Testaments, the fulfillment of proph- 
ecy, the truth and loftiness of the doctrine, the maj- 
esty of the personalities there described, particularly 
Jesus Christ ; but all these things give no certainty. 
Hence the necessity of the Church. This is sub- 
stantially all the argument; and to state it is to 
refute it. It will still remain to ask. Has the Church 
this authority, and therefore has the Scripture the 
certainty which Heinrich ascribes to it? We are 
here brought up again, for the hundredth time, face 
to face with the authority of the Church, which rests 
finally upon nothing but her own assertion of it.^ 
The old Protestant argument from the testimony of 
the Holy Spirit to the Scripture is mentioned by 
Heinrich, but is confounded with the altogether 
different argument from the effect of the Scripture 
upon the heart. Of course, if this line of proof is 
declared of no value, the proof of the Scripture is 
reduced to a mere matter of criticism and science, 
and is, to that extent, removed from the immediate 

1 See ^§ 15, 18, 33, above. 



158 The Roman System. 

knowledge of the unlearned. But the ancient argu- 
ment still holds. Christians do gain, under the teach- 
ings of the Spirit of God, an independent knowledge 
of divine truth, and in consequence of this can recog- 
nize in the Bible the one unique source of religious 
knowledge, the channel by which God has conveyed 
the knowledge of his will to sinful and needy men. 
And this proof is accessible to the most unlearned, 
and has actually been felt and appreciated by mul- 
titudes of such. What can the authority of Rome 
do beside it ? If the authority of '' learned men " 
can never give '' certainty " to a Protestant Chris- 
tian, how can the authority of the pope give certainty 
to the Catholic? It still remains something alto- 
gether outside of himself, something which he must 
take upon some one's dictum, nothing which he 
knows and sees for himself No ! There must be 
some inner perception which is accessible to every 
man — in a word, some teaching of the Spirit, or there 
is no certainty to Catholic or Protestant. 

§ 83. A similar line of thought, involving the old 
idea of infallibility with all its fallacies, is pursued in 
respect to the interpretation of the Scripture. To have 
infallible interpretation, there must be the infallible in- 
terpreter, or the Church. When the Church has de- 
clared the meaning of a passage, that meaning is to be 
accepted as the true one. In other cases tradition is 
to be called in, — that is, the Scripture is to be inter- 
preted by the unanimous interpretation of the fathers. 
What is the unanimous teaching ? Not even in re- 
spect to the text^ Thou art Peter, etc., is there any 



Interpretaiion of Scripture. 159 

unanimity.^ Next, in strict accordance with the 
above, the right of private judgment in respect to the 
meaning of the Scripture is denied. Then Heinrich 
attacks the old Protestant principle .of the clearness 
[perspicuitas) of the Scripture. The attack fails 
because it is directed against a man of straw. While 
at one moment Heinrich defines the doctrine rightly, 
that the Scriptures are clear as to the truths neces- 
sary to salvation, and while he himself admits that 
the clearness of Scripture is such as makes it pos- 
sible " to prove all the chief doctrines of the system 
of faith and morals out of the Scriptures," he is con- 
stantly arguing as if the Protestant doctrine were this, 
that there are no difficulties in the Scripture, and that 
any one can understand it all without help. Of 
course, no Protestant ever held such a doctrine. 
The possibility of failure to understand certain pass- 
ages after every effort to understand them has been 
made, is humbly acknowledged ; but it also remains 
a fact, patent even to Heinrich and admitted by him, 
that a way of salvation is so clearly presented in the 
Scriptures that only willful moral perverseness can 
prevent the reader from knowing what is the an- 
swer for him to the question which the jailer at 
Philippi asked, What must I do to be saved? 

§ 84. Only two principal points more need to be 
touched, the place given by Romanism to the Vul- 
gate, and the prohibition of the Bible to the common 
people. As to the former, Heinrich gives the de- 
crees of Trent the most mild and favorable inter- 
pretation possible when he says that the Vulgate 

I See the facts collected by Archbishop Kenrick, § 24 abpve. 



i6o The Roman System. 

*' correctly gives the sense of the sacred original text 
in all things pertaining to the system of doctrines 
and of duties and to edification in the Christian re- 
ligion." The official edition of the Vulgate gives, 
he declares, " an entirely reliable, yet not an abso- 
lutely perfect text." In other words, he claims for 
the Latin text what the early Protestant theologians 
claimed for the EngUsh Bible and other vernacular 
Bibles, that in these translations the people had the 
true '' word of God." To this position no objection 
can properly be made. Protestants admit it, and de- 
mand in turn that Catholics shall admit theirs. The 
Vulgate is doubtless the vehicle of the word of 
God, certainly as much so as one English Bible, 
Wiclif 's, which was translated from it, and to which 
the new Revised Version has often returned for pref- 
erable renderings. It were an unfair treatment of 
the Roman Church of our own day to make it re- 
sponsible for the extravagances of Middle Age writers 
like Canus, or even greater men, like Bellarmine, 
who defended Mark xvi. 9-20; John vii. 53-viii. ii ; 
I John V. 7, 8, although they were not in the Greek 
text, because they were in the Vulgate, and claimed 
that the Roman Church had watched more carefully 
over the text than other churches ! ^ One thing, 
however, remains true, that the Roman Church has 
not favored the use of the original texts, as have 



1 Details upon this point and upon the history of the prohibition 
of the Bible to the laity are given at length by both Delitzsch and 
Hase, and form an instructive chapter in the history of Rome. 
They illustrate again how the " unchangeable " Church can change in 
her understanding of her own decrees from age to age. 



Prohibition of the Bible, i6i 

Protestants, and has rather been urged upon an un- 
willing path by the course of scientific scholarship 
when she has employed the Greek and Hebrew 
Scriptures. This, in the corrupt condition of the 
Latin text, has been little to her credit. 

The modern apologists for Rome claim that the 
'' Church, far from being opposed to the reading of 
the Scriptures, does all she can to encourage their 
perusal." ^ The various prohibitions which have 
been issued are explained as having reference to in- 
correct translations, such as the Protestant, or to 
unannotated editions, or to the use of the Bible by 
those whose spiritual condition would make this 
otherwise useful book the occasion of difficulty and 
error. But the history of the Church is against these 
apologetic modifications. She has seemed very loath 
indeed to see the Bible in the hands of the people. 
American missionaries, like those in Austria, find 
to-day, even when they circulate Catholic trans- 
lations, with the impidmatiir of Catholic archbishops 
and cardinals upon the fly leaf, that their efforts 
meet the constant and cruel hostility of the Church. 
And, indeed, what is more natural than that 
a Church which confesses that she needs the tra- 
dition to supplement the Scriptures, should be 
reluctant that the Scriptures alone should fall into 
the hands of the people ? A book which has nothing 
about the worship of the Virgin, to say nothing of a 
dozen other main points of the system, must be a 
dangerous book to a Church so mariolatrized as is 
the Church of Pius the IX. and his successor. 

1 F. F., p. ii6. 

n 



i62 The Roman System. 

§ 85. We cannot leave this subject without noticing 
briefly the chapter upon the Church and the Bible 
which Cardinal Gibbons adds to his discussion of the 
authority of the Church/ It is full of sophistries 
and misstatements. He argues to the wrong point 
when he asks whether the Redeemer intended '' that 
his gospel should be disseminated by the circulation 
of the Bible, or by the living voice of his disciples." 
The Bible and the living voice are not thus mutually 
exclusive. No Protestant ever maintained that the 
gospel was not to be preached. The cardinal says : 
" No nation has ever yet been converted by the 
agency of Bible associations." No Protestant ever 
claimed they had been without the added agency of 
preaching; and yet it is true that numerous individ- 
uals in heathen lands have been converted by the 
Scriptures alone, without the agency of preaching. 
The cardinal is guilty of a 7io7t seqtdtur .when he 
says, '' The apostles are never reported to have circu- 
lated a single volume of the Holy Scripture, but 
* they going forth, preached everywhere, the Lord 
cooperating with them.' Thus we see that in the 
Old and the New Dispensation the people were to be 
guided by a living authority, and Jiothy their private 
interpretation of the Scriptures." But it is not true 
that the apostles did not commend the Scriptures, or 
that their work was not followed by careful study of 
the written word. Paul " reasoned " out of the 
Scriptures everywhere, and the sacred historian com- 
mends the Bereans as '' more noble " because they 
searched the Scriptures " to see whether those things 

1 F. F., p. 97 ff. 



Attack upon the Bible. 163 

were so." If the apostolic preaching was anything, 
it was preaching upon the basis of the written word. 
It is again a misrepresentation when the cardinal 
exclaims : " The fact is, you reverend gentlemen 
contradict in practice what you so vehemently ad- 
vance in theory. Do not tell me that the Bible is 
all-sufficient ; or, if you believe it is self-sufficient, 
cease your instructions. Stand not between the 
people and the Scriptures." What Protestant ever 
advanced such a theory? And did the cardinal 
expect readers of sense to take his statement of the 
theory of Protestants, when, on his own showing, 
their practice went against his interpretation of that 
theory ? The argument proceeds after a little to the 
investigation of the fitness of the Bible to be a com- 
plete guide to salvation. Such a guide must have 
three characteristics. It must be within the reach of 
every one ; it must be clear and intelligible ; and 
must be able to satisfy us on all questions relating 
to faith and morals. The inaccessibility of the Bible 
is then argued, because the Bible was in part un- 
written till long after the Church was founded ; be- 
cause there are not, and never have been Bibles 
enough for every one to have a copy ; and because 
many cannot read. What of it ? The same is true 
of the Church. Even the Roman Church has never 
penetrated to every jungle of Africa with her preach- 
ing ; and hence that Chiwch is not a '^ complete " 
guide. If such reasoning is worth anything, it shows 
that there can be no guide for any one. But does 
it prove that a guide is not a guide for those who do 
enjoy its help, that others do not enjoy it? 



1 64 The Roman System, 

Then the Bible is not '' intelligible to all.'' We 
quote the following paragraph to illustrate how many 
mistakes the cardinal can make in so short a compass. 

" Does not the conduct of the Reformers conclu- 
sively show the utter folly of interpreting the Scrip- 
tures by private judgment? As soon as they re- 
jected the oracle of the Church, and set up their own 
private judgment as the highest standard of author- 
ity, tliey could hardly agree among themselves on 
the meaning of a single important text. The Bible 
became in their hands a complete Babel. The sons 
of Noah attempted in their pride to ascend to 
heaven by building a tower at Babel ; their scheme 
ended in the confusion and multiplication of tongues. 
The children of the Reformation endeavored in their 
conceit to lead men to heaven by the private inter- 
pretation of the Bible, and their efforts led to the 
confusion and multiplication of religions. Let me 
give you but one example out of a thousand. These 
words of the gospel, ' This is my body,' were under- 
stood only in one sense before the Reformation, The new 
lights of the sixteenth century gave no fewer than 
eighty different meanings to these four simple words ; 
and since their time the number of interpretations 
has increased to over a hundred."^ 

Now the statement that the Reformers '^ could 
hardly agree among themselves upon the meaning 
of a single important text " is as false as a statement 
can be. The writer has just risen from a renewed 
review of Zwingli's writings, after long familiarity in 
the original Latin, German, and Swiss, with both him 

i F. F..p, io8. 



Agreement of Protestants. 165 

and Luther. One impression more than all else has 
imprinted itself upon his mind, that of the essential and 
wonderful agreement of the two Reformers, and of 
the two schools of doctrine which issued from them, 
upon all the leading principles of the evangelical sys- 
tem, in spite of many minor differences. That there 
was such an agreement is sufficiently proven by two 
facts. The first of these is the fact that Zwingli was 
ready at once to sign the creed which Luther drew up 
at Marburg after the great disputation by these Re- 
formers there, and which contained only one mention 
of difference between the two, that upon the Lord's 
Supper, though covering in a general way the entire 
circle of Christian doctrine. The other fact is that 
of the agreement among the Protestant creeds, from 
the Augsburg Confession to that of Westminster, 
which is so great that they may fairly be called dif- 
ferent forms of one great confession, with only minor 
variations. The agreement is the main thing, and the 
differences are not greater than those between different 
schools in the Catholic Church, like Franciscans and 
Dominicans. This is an argument large enough for 
even a cardinal to respect, this general agreement in 
the results of interpretation, and it leaves not a stick 
for his argument to stand upon. Then, they did not 
set up their private judgment as " the highest standard 
of authority," but the Bible. As to the text, '' This is 
my body," the cardinal is wrong in saying that there 
was only one interpretation before the Reformation, 
for the standard Roman interpretation was not that of 
the primitive Church, and came in only when sacer- 
dotalism, the incipiency of Romanism itself, began to 



1 66 The Roman System. 

corrupt the purity of the early Church ; nor was it 
an undisputed interpretation even in the middle ages, 
as, for example, at the time of Berengar, who rejected 
what Cardinal Gibbons calls the " one sense." Nor 
can the *' eighty " and '' hundred " meanings be made 
out but by the most hairsplitting distinctions, if at all. 
There are in general but two views among Protestants : 
the original Lutheran view, which has now few fol- 
lowers, that the body of Christ is really, though 
spiritually, present in the sacrament, and the other, 
that the bread of the sacrament represents the body. 
To these small dimensions does the " Babel " shrink. 

The cardinal further quotes Mormonism, with its 
advocacy of polygamy, as illustrating the evils of 
Protestant private interpretation. Does not the 
cardinal know that Mormonism is as little like Prot- 
estantism as it is hke Catholicism ? That it has rejected 
the Bible for the Book of Mormon, though it gives 
a certain place nominally to the Bible, as does also 
Mohammedanism, to which it is really kin ? And 
does he also not know that in Mormonism private 
interpretation has little place, for that also is a 
church of infallible teaching, of a dominant priest- 
hood, and of immediate inspiration, — claims which 
the Catholic Church is thus not permitted alone to 
make for itself? 

Nor is the Bible, according to the cardinal, suf- 
ficient, since there are truths and duties not embraced 
within it, such as the duty of observing Sunday. 
Protestants will regard the example chosen a very un- 
fortunate one, for if the day which the Lord hallowed 
by his special appearances after his resurrection, 



Protestantism not a Babel. 167 

which the early Church observed as their special day 
of worship, whereas they discouraged the special 
observance of the ancient Sabbath (Col. ii. 16), has 
not for it the example of the Scripture, then none 
can have. And is apostolic example inferior to 
apostolic precept ? 

It is, indeed, a poor cause which has to be upheld 
after this fashion. 



PART II. 

THE SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES PERTAINING TO 
SALVATION. 



CHAPTER I. 
JUSTIFICATION. FAITH, AND WORKS. 

§ 86. The central point in the controversy of Prot- 
estants with the Roman Church is the claim which 
that church makes to possess divine authority to 
prescribe the doctrines which men must believe, as 
well as the course of practical conduct which they 
must pursue. But the original revolt of Luther 
from Rome was not at this point. He was not a 
rebel to authority, led by some unruly desire to con- 
trol others or himself Separation from Rome was a 
later necessity forced upon him, not the immediate 
goal of his efforts, or the next consequence of his 
original premises. He first took his position upon 
the facts of his own spiritual experience. He was 
simply true to what he had learned of the grace of 
God in the Roman communion itself He was con- 
sciously a forgiven soul. He traced that forgiveness 
in his own experience to the free grace of Christ 
bestowed upon him without merit of his own, upon 
the sole ground of the sacrifice of Christ, and in 

169 



170 The Roman System. 

immediate consequence of that faith by which he 
had thrown himself upon the mercy of God. Thus 
he was led to the doctrine of Justification by Faith ; 
and about this doctrine, the " article of the standing 
or falling Church," the battle waxed fierce. And 
truly, if this doctrine be rightly received and heartily 
accepted, all that external system, the main features 
of which we have now elaborately considered, will 
pass away under the powerful influence of the concep- 
tion that salvation is to be sought within the soul 
itself, consisting in what a man by grace is, not in 
his surroundings, nor in what is done by others for 
him. 

The Roman definition of justification was brought 
out by the Reformation, and is expressed by the 
Council of Trent : '' Justification ... is not remis- 
sion of sins merely, but also the sanctification and 
renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary 
reception of the grace and of the gifts, whereby 
man of unjust becomes just, and of an enemy a 
friend. . . . The alone formal cause is the justice of 
God, not that whereby he himself is just, but that 
whereby he maketh us just, that, to wit, with which 
we, being endowed by him, are renewed in the spirit 
of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are 
truly called, and are just, receiving justice within us. 
. . . Whence man, through Jesus Christ, receives in 
the said justification together with the remission of 
his sins, all these gifts infused at once, faith, hope, 
and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity 
be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly 
with Christ, nor makes him a living member of his 



Man's Original State. 171 

body." * In a word, justification includes sanctifica- 
tion, and is *' infused " righteousness. 

In the following discussion we shall follow prin- 
cipally the path struck out by Mohler.^ He has 
presented the Catholic doctrine in a form highly 
spiritual and ideal ; no one more so. He may therefore 
serve better than most to set it before us in the form 
in which it will be somewhat acceptable to the Prot- 
estant mind ; and if it shall be shown, as is hoped 
it can be, that the Protestant doctrine is still more 
spiritual and more in accord with Scripture and with 
spiritual facts, the Protestant argument will have 
been put in its strongest form. For certainly there is 
a gross Catholicism which is far less capable of ac- 
ceptation — to which also some attention must be paid. 

§ 87. Mohler begins his discussion with defining 
the original condition of man before the fall. Adam 
was created in the image of God ; that is, he was in 
his original condition before the fall, holy and right- 
eous. The Roman Church thus seeks to maintain 
the holiness of God, who did not create a sinful 
creature, and into whose work sin crept by the act 
of man. It emphasizes also the thought that the 
original holiness of man was, like all hohness, the 
consequence of the indwelHng of the Spirit of God, 
not to be attained or retained by any mere powers 
of nature. With this we have no controversy, 
although Mohler says that Luther ascribed the per- 
fection of the first man to his nature, and not to the 
Holy Spirit ; for from the Westminster Confession^ 

I Schaff, vol. ii., p. 94 ff. 2 Symbolik, pp. 25-253. 

3 Chaps, iv. and vi. 



172 The Roman System, 

which taught that God '' created man . . . endued 
with . . . righteousness, and true hoHness, after his 
own image," and declared that by the original sin our 
first parents " fell from their original righteousness, 
and communion with God," down to Jonathan 
Edwards,^ who taught that the disastrous results of 
the fall were chiefly in man's deprivation of the 
Holy Spirit, such has been the doctrine of Protes- 
tants. 

After a long chapter upon the origin of evil, in 
which Mohler constantly identifies Protestantism 
with the earliest effort of the Protestant leaders to 
deal with this exceedingly difficult subject — a chapter 
which needs only the single remark by way of reply 
that Mohler himself shows us that those views had 
undergone substantial modification as early as the 
Augsburg Confession — he advances to the topic of 
original sin. The consequences of Adam's sin are 
" the loss of his original righteousness and holiness, 
the displeasure and punishment of God, death, and 
corruption in all his parts, of body as well as of soul." 
Further, the fathers of Trent ascribe even to fallen 
man freedom of will, although they present it as very 
much weakened, and consequently teach that not all 
ethico-religious action of the same is necessarily sin, 
although never of itself pleasing to God or in any 
respect perfect." ^ 

We cannot pass on without one word in criticism 
of the last of these expressions, since it reflects the 
Semi-Pelagianism of the Roman theology. What is 
it which is not sin, and yet at the same time not 

^ Treatise on Original Sin, Part IV., ch. ii. ^ Qp ^^/^ pp^ 54-56. 



Mbhler on Justification, 173 

pleasing to God? Protestantism has united with 
Augustinianism from the beginning to affirm that all 
the moral activities of man apart from the renewing 
grace of God are sinful, for they spring from inherited 
corruption, and lack the root of all holy action, viz., 
faith. Mohler has fallen here into a confusion of 
thought which is the consequence of his attempt to 
maintain a '' freedom of will " which is not entire, 
but " weakened." How can there be '' weakened '* 
will ? If the will is free, it is free ; and if it is not, it 
is not. The error here, as Protestants have always 
affirmed, consists in ascribing to man before regenera- 
tion any holiness, or any disposition toward holiness, 
of which he is as perfectly destitute as if he were dead 
— as, indeed, the apostle styles him. It is essential 
to the evangelical system that it ^ould be taught 
that without the prevenient grace of God man does 
nothing which is acceptable in his sight. So far as 
Catholicism means to maintain that, Protestants will 
agree with it. 

§ 88. We may come therefore after these prelimi- 
nary remarks directly to the main center of the 
ancient contention, to the doctrine of justification. 
Mohler says : 

"According to the Council of Trent, the case 
stands as follows : the sinner, estranged from God, is 
called back to the divine kingdom without being able 
to exhibit any merit in himself; that is, without being 
able to make any claim to grace or to forgiving 
mercy. The divine call which is issued to him for 
Christ's sake is conveyed not merely by the external 
invitation by means of the preaching of the gospel, 



174 The Ro7nan System. 

but also at the same time by an inward activity c^ 
the Holy Spirit, who awakens the slumbering powers 
of the man, fallen more or less into the sleep of 
moral death, and moves the same to unite himself 
with the power from above, in order to enter upon 
a new course of life and to establish again commun- 
ion with God (prevenient grace). If the sinner listens 
to the call which he receives, the first consequence 
of the divine and human activity thus cooperating 
is faith in God's word. The sinner perceives the ex- 
istence of a higher government of the world, and is 
convinced of the same with a certainty never before 
imagined. The higher truths and promises which 
he perceives, especially the good news that God so 
loved the world that he gave his only Son for it and 
offers to all, for the sake of the merits of Christ, the 
forgiveness of their sins, fill the sinner with amaze- 
ment. When he compares that which he is with that 
which, according to the revealed will of God, he 
ought to be ; when he learns that the sin and cor- 
ruption of the world are so great that they can be 
expunged only through the intervention of the Son 
of God, he attains true knowledge of himself and is 
at the same time filled with fear of the vindicatory 
justice of God. He turns now to the divine mercy 
in Christ Jesus, and forms the confident hope that 
even he may receive God's favor and the forgiveness 
of his sins for the sake of the Redeemer. The same 
view of God's infinite love for men enkindles in the 
breast of the man a spark of divine love, in conse- 
quence of which hate and loathing of sin are awak- 
ened, and the man repents. So by the mingled 



Criticism of Mokler. 175 

activity of the Holy Spirit and the man, who through 
his freedom surrenders himself, is justification proper 
introduced. If he remains, now, true to the holy 
work thus begun, the divine Spirit communicates 
himself in all hia fullness to him, sanctifying him and 
forgiving his sins at the same time, and sheds abroad 
the love of God in the heart of the man, so that he 
is set free from sin in its ultimate root and inwardly 
renewed, lives a new and God-pleasing life — that is, is 
truly righteous before God, truly performs good 
works as fruits of his renewed spirit, of his sanctified 
disposition, advances from righteousness to righteous- 
ness, and in consequence of his present ethico-relig- 
ious condition, gained through the merits of Christ 
and his Spirit, becomes a participant in the blessed- 
ness of heaven. Yet even the justified man does 
not rejoice, without special revelation, in the abso- 
lutely infaUible certainty that he belongs to the 
elect." 1 

§ 89. It may be said comprehensively that every 
cardinal position in this paragraph is either totally 
incorrect or seriously defective. The root of all its 
error lies in its confusion between justification and 
sanctification, and this is a consequence of its irrec- 
oncilable disagreement with the New Testament. 
The word "justification" is taken by the Catholic 
Church in its strict meaning according to its compo- 
sition in both Greek and Latin, as signifying '' viak- 
ing righteous." But nothing can be clearer to the 
careful student of the Epistle to the Romans than 
that St, Paul uses this word in the sense which the 

^ Op. cit., pp. 100-102. 



176 The Roman System, 

Protestant divines asserted, in the sense of " declar- 
ing righteous." In Romans iii. 19 the world is 
represented as standing before the judgment seat of 
God and seeking acquittal. They would urge their 
works ; but " by the works of the law shall no flesh 
be justified in his sight" — /. ^., they get no acquittal in 
that fashion. In the same chapter, verse 28, we read, 
'' We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith 
apart from {yjof)c::) the works of the law." Now he 
cannot be 7nade just, in the CathoHc sense, apart 
from works of the law, since he is made just, accord- 
ing to them, precisely by those works ; and there- 
fore the only consistent sense of the word is that 
''justifying" means " declaring" and not "making" 
righteous. Doubtless, the two cannot be sepa- 
rated. The justified man will go on to sanctification. 
But it is exceedingly important that the conditions 
of his justification — that is, of his forgiveness — be 
kept absolutely distinct in the mind from all admix- 
ture with the question of sanctification. 

Mohler does not understand this, and he can there- 
fore speak of justification as a process. It can be 
" introduced," and proceed in such a way that for- 
giveness and sanctification shall go hand in hand. 
But since it is an act, it is an instantaneous affair. 
The Saviour can declare to the penitent woman, 
'' Thy sins be forgiven thee." When a man beHeves, 
he '' hath " eternal life. God asks simply whether 
the condition of forgiveness is fulfilled, and then 
with the faithfulness of one who keeps his promises 
and waits only upon spiritual conditions for spiritual 
gifts, he declares the sinner righteous. 



Faith Mzsu7tderstood, 177 

But not only is justification misunderstood ; the con- 
dition of justification is equally misunderstood. The 
Holy Spirit is said to move the man " to unite him- 
self with the power from above," and then " the first 
consequence of the divine and human activity thus 
cooperating is faith in God's word." This is the 
first mention of faith, and now it is belief of a truth ; 
that is, substantially an intellectual affair. But in 
the " uniting " a vastly greater thing has taken place 
than merely believing a thing to be true, for this is 
an act of the whole man " receiving " grace, or put- 
ting forth his voluntaiy activity and bringing himself 
into harmony with God. It is the exercise of sav- 
ing faith. 

Mohler, still following closely the Council of Trent, 
next speaks of a " hstening to the call," upon which 
follow various steps leading toward justification. 
Now, if there is any true listening, the moment this 
occurs is the moment of conversion. True hstening 
will be the submission of the will to God ; and sub- 
mission of the will is twofold in its character; it is 
turning away from sin and turning toward God, so 
that it is both repentance and faith. The various 
steps which Mohler traces as though they were dis- 
tinct spiritual processes are only phases of the same 
thing, viz., of faith. While there is little to criticise 
in the entire picture of faith as he represents it, when 
thus understood, it is a fault that all is so managed as 
to obscure the true nature of what is distinctively 
called " saving " faith. Confusion at this point leads 
to some strange results. Father Hecker even deduces 
from the fact that Protestants teach the right of 
12 



178 The Roman System. 

private judgment, which prevents the blind accept- 
ance of what the Church says as true, the strange 
result that they are thereby precluded from the exer- 
cise of faith, and so destroy their own system funda- 
mentally.^ But Protestants have never understood 
under " saving faith " the intellectiial acceptance of 
truth as true. It is rather, to use a favorite phrase 
of President Fairchild's, " treating the truth as true.'' 
It is an act of the will, a choice, the choice of Christ 
as Saviour and King, the choice of duty, the putting 
of one's supreme good in God, trusting Christ, in- 
trusting one's self to him, or however else one may 
phrase the same thought. Under whatever form it 
is exercised, if it is really put forth,* that is the 
moment of conversion and that the moment of justi- 
fication. 

§ 90. We have thus touched a topic upon which 
something more needs to be said. If the conception 
of justification held by Protestants is one difficult for 
Catholics to comprehend, the conception of faith 
seems still more difficult. If one lacks the key to 
his interpretation, it must be confessed that Luther, 
with his exuberant and often extravagant expressions, 
frequently seems to contradict himself, and leaves the 
subject darker than it was before. Mohler devotes 
many pages to the theme,^ but without making any 
great progress. When he attempts to define the 
Catholic position, he says faith is '^a reunion with 
God in Christ principally by the powers of knowl- 
edge illuminated and strengthened by grace." ^ Here 

^ Questio7is of the Soul, pp. 144 and 145. 2 qj,^ cit., p. 145 ff. 

^ Page 149. 



Distinctions as to Faith, 179 

he accords with Bellarmine, who says that '^the 
Catholics say that faith has its seat in the intellect." ^ 
But Mohler does not remain upon such a low plane 
as this. He continues : '' But if faith, beginning in 
the intelligence and borne by the emotions which 
are immediately excited by it, penetrates to the will, 
and permeates, quickens, and fertilizes this, . . . then 
first, according to Cathohcs, has the new birth, justi- 
fication, been introduced." ^ And still further, under 
the name of fides fonnata^ employing thus an old 
scholastic distinction, he says: '^ This is that higher 
faith which brings the man into a real communion 
with Christ, fills him with complete devotion to God, 
with the deepest confidence in him, with entire humil- 
ity and inward love, frees the man from sin, and 
causes him to behold and love all creatures in 
God." ^ Now this accords very closely with the 
Protestant idea of faith, which is, to quote one of the 
foremost representatives of Lutheran Protestantism 
of our own day. Professor Luthardt, of Leipzig, " the 
individual and personal appropriation, wrought not 
simply in the intellect, but rather in the will, of sal- 
vation effected and present in Christ Jesus." * 

We venture to say that, with all the differences of 
expression in various writers, this has ever been the 
fundamental thought of Protestants as to faith ; that 
it is the complete and glad surrender of the will to 
God, the appropriation of the offered salvation by a 
voluntary act, the taking of Jesus Christ as Saviour 
and King, the supreme choice of God. Of all these 

^ De Justif., i., 4. Quoted by Luthardt, Compendium, p. 253. 
2 Page 150. 3 Page 150. * Compendium, p. 247. 



i8o The Roman System, 

forms of expression, the most helpful to the writer 
has always been the single word, choice. It is the 
coming of the soul to an agreement with God. It is, 
therefore, the restoration of communion with him. 
It contains within it, as an essential element, love, 
the love of choice, from which the love of the emo- 
tions cannot long be separated. Luther, to be sure, 
denied, as Mohler quotes him to prove, that justify- 
ing faith included love, but the love he was thinking 
of was love going out in kindness toward men, in 
distinction from the faith which laid hold upon Christ. 
He never would have denied that justifying faith in- 
volved love to God, for are not his expressions full 
of the thought that the believing soul finds his 
delight in God? 

These are the great defects of the Roman view of 
justification as presented by Mohler and common to 
all Catholic theologians. There are topics of less 
importance upon which something ought to be said 
ere the subject is left behind. Mohler is also seriously 
in error in attempting to describe the process of a 
soul in coming to God in so formal a fashion, as if 
every soul followed just such steps, and in just such 
an order. The fact is, on the contrary, that scarcely 
any two souls pursue exactly the same path. The 
essential elements of the change which leads to justi- 
fication are the prevenient action of the Holy Spirit 
and the consequent exercise of faith. Doubtless 
that prevenient action all falls under one great cate- 
gory, and that consequent action has many aspects 
in which it may be viewed by the sinner or by others 
about him ; but given the essence of the great change 



Semi-Pelagiamsm, i8i 

within a man, and the result of justification follows. 
The scheme which Mohler, in dependence upon the 
Council of Trent, has given us, commits the error, 
therefore, of being wise above that which is written, 
either in Scripture or in human experience. 

The phrase " powers of man fallen more or less 
into the sleep of moral death " contains another im- 
portant error, as well as an illustration of the feeble- 
ness produced by the Semi-Pelagianism of the Roman 
Church. The apostle characterizes the Ephesian 
Christians before their conversion as " dead through 
trespasses and sins" (ii. i); but he says nothing 
about '' more or less " ! The language of Mohler is 
not Tridentine at this point, although the thought is, 
since Trent denied in the first chapter upon justifica- 
tion that the free will was ^' extinguished," here declin- 
ing to follow the Council of Orange, which had said 
it was '' lost." The truth is, man is wholly dead, as 
Trent itself elsewhere teaches ; that is, he is alto- 
gether a sinner, set upon a wrong course, directed 
downward, and wholly without what can please 
God, and hence wholly displeasing to him. That is 
the radicalism of Protestantism and of the Scrip- 
tures. 

Mohler closes his treatment by denying that the 
justified man has an '' absolutely infallible certainty 
that he belongs to the elect." Luther's expressions 
upon this topic moved in the sphere of the ideal 
rather than the actual, and may be charged with 
some degree of extravagance. Protestants have 
generally held, with the Westminster Confession, 
that assurance is not '' of the essence of faith ; " that 



i82 The Roma7i System, 

is, in plain words, that a true believer may for certain 
reasons springing out of his imperfect sanctification 
be for a longer or shorter time in doubt as to his real 
spiritual condition. The temper of the Reformed 
churches has always been unfavorable to confident 
assertions in this regard. Luther doubtless never 
meant quite what was imputed to him by the Coun- 
cil of Trent. He meant what the old monk did who 
brought him to the knowledge of Christ and the ex- 
perience of forgiveness by pointing him to the creed, 
*' I believe in the forgiveness of sins " — that is, " of 
my sins." But a man who knows that he believes 
may have an '' infallible assurance " of his salvation, 
since he may rest with entire confidence upon the 
promise of Christ, " He that heareth my word, and 
believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and 
Cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of 
death into life." The filial spirit toward God, crying 
'' Father," is the work of the Spirit in our hearts, and 
so his witness, that we are the children of God ; and 
hence may come assurance. And the fruits of Chris- 
tian faith, love toward men, conquest over temptation, 
gentleness, meekness, temperance, and all the other 
"fruits of the Spirit," show the presence of the 
Spirit, and the presence of the Spirit is salvation. In 
all these ways the true believer may, ought, and 
ultimately will, come into the possession of an assur- 
ance of his acceptance with God. He needs no 
" special revelation." He has the entire, perfect, and 
completed revelation of God in his word upon which 
to found his hope. This is the Protestant doctrine 
of assurance, and this is all of it 



Good Works, 183 

§ 91. The full meaning of these differences is not 
gained, however, till we have followed the conse- 
quences of the Roman methods of contemplating 
the subject into its application to the matter of good 
works. 

Mohler's presentation of this theme may be con- 
densed into a few sentences/ '' By good works the 
Catholic Church understands the entire ethical life 
of the justified Christian, active and passive, or the 
fruits of his sanctified disposition, of his believing 
love. With the observance of certain ecclesiastical 
ceremonies, external usages, etc., we have nothing 
here to do. The predicate ' good ' can be applied 
only to works performed in real communion of life 
with Christ. Such works may be called meritorious, 
and are performed by our freedom through the 
power of Christ. They are properly the gifts of 
God to men, but, as the fathers say, are counted by 
him as our merits. Can heaven be merited by the 
faithful ? Yes, and can be gained in no other way. 
Men must merit it ; that is, must become worthy of 
it through Christ. There must be produced a Hke- 
ness between them and heaven, an inward relation, 
that very relation which, according to God's eternal 
order and his distinct promises, is sustained by sanc- 
tification to blessedness, which two things are as in- 
separable as cause and effect.'' 

In this immediate connection Mohler handles the 
doctrine of purgatory. '' It is," he says, '' the most 
complete contradiction to speak of entering heaven 
stained with sin, whether this be covered or not cov- 

1 Page 197 ff. 



184 The Roman System, 

ered. The question is therefore forced upon us, 
How is man finally to be freed from sin, and that 
which is holy in him made living and pervasive ? Or, 
if we leave this world still sinful in any respect, how 
are we to be purified from the same ? " The Catholic 
answer to this question is. Purgatory, by which is 
meant that in the intermediate state there will be a 
process by which the soul will be finally purified 
from sin and entirely sanctified, so that it shall be 
ready for admission to heaven. 

Finally, because Protestants will not teach the 
necessity of good works to salvation, they are said 
to put an essential difference between religion and 
morals, making the former alone of eternal import- 
ance, and ascribing a merely temporal importance 
to the latter. 

§ 92. With much of what Mohler here says, Prot- 
estants may agree. But the thought of merit in 
the good works of Christians is one which will bear 
no investigation. Indeed, Catholicism itself theoret- 
ically denies it, for it says that our good works are 
God's gifts rather than our merits. There let it stand. 
They are not in themselves meritorious. If it were 
not for something else, the atoning work of Christ, 
they could have no connection with our salvation, 
for we could not be saved at all. '' Meriting heaven '' 
by good works is a very unhappy expression. Sup- 
pose an account were to be opened, and merit cred- 
ited to the Christian. His whole sinful past before 
regeneration w^e may suppose stricken out of the 
account by the forgiving grace of God. But in his 
post-regenerate state how many sins does he com- 



No Merit in Good Works. 185 

mit ! What saint was there ever who did not have 
to confess a multitude of sins ? '' If we say we have 
no sin," we who are Christians, " we deceive our- 
selves." The Roman Church teaches no sinless per- 
fection for men in a state of grace. All must come 
to confession. There are sins of thought, as well as 
of word and deed. Many of these are " mortal sins," 
in Catholic terminology, for Rome says of some 
sins what Westminster says of all, "" Sin deserveth 
God's wrath and curse, both in this life and that 
which is to come." It was the Cathohc Anselm of 
Canterbury who taught that even to look in a direc- 
tion which God forbade would be an infinite sin; and 
the Protestant and Congregationalist, Jonathan Ed- 
wards, laid emphasis upon the infinity of sin as ex- 
plaining the necessity of an infinite punishment. The 
saint is, in a word, imperfect, heaped with infinite 
transgressions ; and hence he is wholly unfit to enter 
a claim in merit for heaven, since he ''that has 
offended in one point is guilty of all." 

With these principles in mind, the Protestant con- 
ception of justification is seen to be the only one 
possible. God looks to see whether he can forgive 
the sinner and receive him to his favor. He does 
not look at good works, for they avail nothing. He 
asks simply whether the sinner has faith, and when 
he sees that, he forgives. But he has not therefore 
thrown a slight upon good works. The Protestant 
does not view faith and works as separated, or relig- 
ion and morals as belonging to different spheres. 
He establishes rather the most intimate union be- 
tween the two. If there be faith, there must be 



1 86 The Roman System. 

works. Faith, considered as an act of the will, is a 
choice of the will of God, an acceptance of the di- 
vine will for the man's will, of the law of God for 
the man's law. Hence there must be obedience 
to that law. It will not be a perfect obedience, for 
the saint is also sinful, whether he be Protestant or 
Catholic, but it will be a real obedience, and it will 
gain in constancy and comprehensiveness as the union 
of heart with the will of God grows, or as faith be- 
comes deeper and stronger. A real faith in the 
Protestant sense, without works, is as completely 
impossible as a flowing fountain without any issuing 
stream. All Protestant creeds, which speak of the 
topic at all, make the evidence of faith to consist in 
the tangible evidence of actual good works, the fruits 
of the Spirit. 

Thus when life ends, the Protestant does not view 
the transition to another world as Mohler thinks he 
must, nor does he find a purgatory necessary. There 
need be no magical or mechanical change in death, 
which Mohler supposes he must predicate. But one 
great change takes place, at least. The soul drops 
its body, and with it all those inducements to sin 
that spring from bodily appetites, and all those occa- 
sions of sin that arise out of physical conditions. 
The will is at harmony with God by the perfect 
choice of his law as its rule. Why should not the in- 
dividual choices all hereafter correspond with that 
ultimate choice? And what call is there for the 
supposition of a purifying fire ? Is not that essen- 
tially a punishment of sin ? And what punishment 
can there still be to a forgiven soul, to whom Christ 



Popular Distortions. 187 

has said, " Today thou shalt be with me in 
paradise." ^ 

While, therefore, the modern Protestant has httle 
objection to many things which Mohler says, and 
can cordially echo such sentiments as this, that there 
must be '' a likeness between them and heaven, 
an inward relation," before the saints can enter it, he 
does not regard the Catholic doctrine as theoretic- 
ally correct. The great objection which he has to 
the Catholic doctrine of good works is, however, 
against its practical, its popular distortions, rather 
than against its scholastic definitions. If the com- 
mon Catholic in America does not think that he is 
earning heaven in the sense of giving a quid pro 
quo, and that by many '^ecclesiastical observances," 
then ordinary Protestant observation is wonderfully 
at fault. Such is not only the actual, it is almost 
the inevitable consequence of any doctrine of merit 
in good works at all. The Christian ought not to 
fix his eyes upon his works when he is thinking of 
salvation, but upon God. If he does, he will esteem 
himself far more highly than he ought to do. A 
certain '' self-righteousness," not in the sense in 
which Mohler claims a man should have it — that is, 
righteousness really in himself,^ but in the more 
odious sense of undue self-complacence in view of 
supposed merit, seems to be too characteristic of 
Catholics, as they ordinarily are. 

§ 93. But the Protestant objection to the Catholic 

1 A fuller discussion of purgatory in its general relations follows in 
Chapter VI. 

2 Op. cit., p. 202. 



1 88 The Roma7i System. 

position goes deeper than this. The Roman Church 
identifies, as we have often seen heretofore, the ex- 
ternal with the internal. It emphasizes prevenient 
grace, and it declares that this cannot be merited. 
But it also teaches that this grace is bestowed in 
baptism upon all the children of Catholic families, 
and that the guilt of original sin is then washed away. 
The grace of God has been bestowed, and now, of 
course, the new life has begun. Hence the child is 
held to the observance of the commandments, and 
its good deeds are regarded as truly meritorious, 
though there may not be a solitary outward sign 
of a genuine conversion of soul to God. Thus it 
goes on " meriting " heaven, never having occasion 
to refer its good works to the grace of God apart 
from the opus opcratiim of the Church. And hence 
it is taught in many cases to depend upon good 
works for salvation without faith, because in fact it 
knows that it has no faith. All is purely external 
and mechanical in thousands and thousands of 
cases. 

We discover here the key to those marvelous 
minimizings of Christian ideas which are current in 
Catholic practice and morals, and which we shall 
meet again at a later point of this discussion. Here 
is a child in the Church, let us suppose, passing 
through the various stages of Christian instruction 
and life under the Catholic system. He has no true 
share in the grace of God, but still, according to 
theory, as a baptized child, as one who has come 
to confession and who has partaken of the sacra- 
ments of the Church, he is in a state of grace. Now, 



Minimizings of Christian Ideas, 189 

theoretically, he ought to have faith in God. He 
ought to be justified, and this ought to be a truly 
spiritual process ; but there is no evidence of any 
such spiritual faith. Therefore a mere outward, his- 
torical faith in what the Church teaches is accepted, 
instead of a spiritual process. There ought to be 
true repentance for sins, but a mere contritio, and 
then an attritio^ have to be accepted in its stead, since 
it is itself wanting. In like manner love is reduced 
to a mere word, and for good deeds springing out of 
love, mere outward giving of alms, mere repeating 
of prayers, even without understanding the words 
(Latin Paternosters), have to be accepted. Thus 
according to the theory, the person who performs 
the outward works of piety is assumed to have the 
inward grace because in the Church, while in fact 
the heart is left unmoved, the soul unsanctified, the 
sins unforgiven ; and instead of receiving the fulfill- 
ment of the promise of the Church that heaven 
shall be its reward, the poor soul is going down to 
receive eternal condemnation. Thus to confound 
the external with the internal is to lay a snare for 
souls. 

§ 94. And now the refutation of the Roman doc- 
trine, that salvation is possible only within the pale 
of the Catholic Church, which was interrupted at the 
close of § 47, may be completed. The pivotal ques- 
tion upon this subject is this. Has Rome any monop- 
oly of the way of salvation ? Does she alone under- 
stand it? Can she alone provide the means and 
channels by which it can be obtained ? We have 
now shown that her understanding of it is incorrect ; 



I go The Roman System, 

that she misinterprets the sole biblical - condition, 
faith ; and that the priesthood which she has set up, 
the mediation of which she declares to be necessary, 
has no authority in the word of God or in the his- 
tory of the Church. Therefore she has no such 
monopoly. While, on the other hand, the undeni- 
able existence of spiritual experiences in Protestant 
communions, the loyal fulfillment in them of scrip- 
tural conditions of salvation, and the positive Chris- 
tian certainty attained there under the Holy Spirit, 
prove that salvation is actually bestowed upon some 
outside the pale of Rome. This simple fact is worth 
tons of unfounded assertions, and tons of arguments 
drawn from fallacious premises. 



CHAPTER II. 

OUTGROWTHS OF THE DOCTRINE OF MERIT. 

§ 95. The doctrine of merit, whereby a man can 
do something which is worthy of reward from God, 
suggests the provision of ways in which additional 
reward can be obtained. Merits are opposed to de- 
merits, and the thought Hes near that the one may 
be used to offset the other. But this can evidently 
be done only when the work for which the com- 
pensating merit is awarded is a work which was not 
strictly required of the Christian, or when it is 
'' supererogatory," as it is called. The Roman Cath- 
olic theology advances, therefore, with the logical 
consequence of a complete system, to the provision 
of this class of works. 

The distinction is made between the divine com- 
mands, which apply to all, and which carry with them 
no possibility of the desired merit, and the '' evangelical 
counsels,'' which are to be obeyed only by those 
who seek a special perfection. These exhort in par- 
ticular to voluntary celibacy and poverty. Volun- 
tary self-denial, almsgiving, prayers, etc., are in the 
same category. To do such works is to do some- 
thing more than is demanded of one, something 
" supererogatory." By the performance of these 
supererogatory works a fund of merit may be ac- 
quired, and this may be transferred to the account 

191 



i()2 The Roman System. 

of some other person, as, for example, one now suf- 
fering in purgatory. 

§ 96. The scriptural proof of this position is un- 
usually tenuous. Our Lord said to the rich young 
man : '' If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou 
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have trea- 
sure in heaven : and come, follow me." ^ But " per- 
fect " does not mean some degree of superiority to 
other Christians, for the plain intimation of the con- 
text, where our Lord says that it is hard for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of God, is that this 
young man was not a saved person. In fact, he had 
not truly obeyed the commandments at all, for he 
had not had love ; and the probing command of 
Christ was designed to bring this fact to his mind. 
If he had had any true Christian faith, he would 
have been '^perfect" in the sense of the text. His 
" treasure in heaven " would have been a well- 
grounded hope of salvation. The apostle Paul also 
gave the advice not to marry ,^ but it was '' by reason 
of the present distress," and in expectation, as it 
would appear, of the near advent of the Lord. Not 
a trace can be found of the Roman idea of superero- 
gation. 

§ 97. Mohler seeks to give a highly ideal turn to 
this conception. He says : " We perceive, when we 
consider the lives of the saints, that they are conscious 
of being in possession of an all-sufficient, infinite 
power ; and this is that which discovers ever more 
delicate and noble relations of man to God and his 
fellow-men, so that he who is sanctified in Christ and 

1 Matt. xix. 21. 2 I Cor. vii. 26. 



Works of Supererogation. 193 

filled with his Spirit, always feels himself superior to 
the law. It is the way of love which has begun in 
God, which stands far, infinitely above the demands 
of the mere law, that it is never satisfied with the 
directions of the law and ever becomes more inven- 
tive Only in this manner is that remarkable 

doctrine to be satisfactorily explained, the doctrine 
that there may be works which are more than suf- 
ficient {opera siipererogationis)!' ^ In antithesis to this, 
but only in partial antithesis. Protestantism teaches 
that no man can ever do more than his duty, for that 
duty equals the highest povv-ers of his soul. " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." 
Nothing more can be asked or given. True, the 
Christian heart, in possession of this " infinite power," 
feels itself above the law — that is, above its yoke, 
above it as an external and unwelcome standard; 
but as it becomes ''inventive," and seeks new ways 
of pleasing God, all its discoveries of possibilities 
become duties, the inward call of God upon it for 
service in the discovered way. There may arise 
occasions, and they are frequent enough, when 
poverty must be voluntarily borne for the sake of 
performing some good ; but there is no virtue in 
poverty as such. Celibacy is sometimes necessary, 
or advisable in the same way ; but to the Protestant 
eye the mother among her children, exercising her 
tender care over them, watching and praying in their 
behalf, denying herself food and rest and comfort 
for their health and advantage, is a fairer sight than 
the nun in unnatural and often selfish and useless 

' op. cit., p. 216. 
13 



194 The Roman System. 

seclusion from the world, however many prayers she 
may say. 

It is, of course, true that there are works which 
are not the duty of every man, since few have either 
the opportunity or the power to perform them. Such 
are the services which the great heroes and leaders 
of humanity have wrought, as Luther, Washington, 
Lincoln. But if any man were to find himself placed 
as they were and able to do what they were able to 
do, his duty would be identical with theirs. The 
general principle remains, and it covers the whole 
ground, that God asks of every man the complete 
surrender of his whole self There is nothing more 
to give., and hence no place for any supererogatory 
works. 

§ 98. A further application of the idea of merit is 
found in the monastic system of the Catholic Church. 
The great supererogatory works are chastity and 
poverty, and they find their best field of performance 
in the monastic world, where, with the added ele- 
ments of obedience and stability, or the perpetuity 
of the vows taken, they constitute the central and 
formative principles of the system. 

Monasticism is, however, not of Christian origin, 
but of heathen.^ The stories told of Paul and An- 
thony, the reputed founders of monasticism, are 
legendary, and of no historical value. The system 
really begins with Pachomius, and was derived by 
him from the worship of the Egyptian heathen deity 
Serapis, with which a monasticism, having every 

1 See the article by Weingarten, Monchthum, in Herzog RE., vol. i., 
p. 758. 



Monasttctsm, 195 

distinctive feature of the '' rule of Pachomius," had 
long been associated. The contemplative life, which 
active and industrious occidentals are sometimes 
inclined to designate by an adjective far less com- 
plimentary, was well adapted to the climate and gen- 
eral conditions of both Egypt and India, in which 
countries it is prehistoric. An oriental Christianity 
took it up, and occidental Christianity, after much 
resistance, accepted it, and, modifying it, made it for 
a long time of essential value in the career of the 
Church as that actually developed. 

It is not the writer's purpose to refuse proper 
recognition of the good done by monasticism, or by 
any other peculiar institution of Romanism in dis- 
tinction from Protestantism. No historians have 
been more cordial in acknowledging the services of 
the system to literature, art, civilization, agriculture, 
colonization, rehgion, and liberty, than Protestants. 
Those services were great. It is even difficult to see 
how, as things were, they could have been rendered 
by any other agency in existence during the Middle 
Ages. But, considered as an ideal system, as having 
a right on account of its intrinsic merits to a perma- 
nent place in the apparatus of the Christian Church, 
monasticism is to be judged unfavorably. It seems 
to carry within it the seeds of its own corruption, 
and the first and great Protestant argument against 
it is the historical one, that it has shown itself unfit 
to live. EstabHshed under Benedict in 590, the 
Benedictine Order was always falling into moral cor- 
ruption, into both luxury and license, and always 
undergoing reform. The laments at the corruption 



196 The Roman System, 

of monastic institutions do not come principally 
from Protestant sources. The bitterest of them are 
uttered by Catholics. The whole life and distinguish- 
ing fame of Benedict of Aniane are a testimony 
against the corruption of his time. The famous 
monastery of Clugny was founded to reform monas- 
ticism, but fell itself into such disorder that after 
centuries of existence it was suppressed. The Cis- 
tercian Order, of which Bernard was the shining light, 
was a reforming order. The mendicant orders of St. 
Francis and St. Dominic were the result of the mani- 
fest need of purer service. At the Reformation the 
condition of things was exceedingly bad. The 
wholesale suppression of monasteries and convents 
was the result of new ideas as to the propriety of 
binding vows of the monastic sort and of a new con- 
ception of the way of salvation through faith ; but 
it was also the result of the evil repute into which 
the monasteries had fallen. They were often little 
better than brothels. Amid all the selfish violence 
which caused princes and states to sequester founda- 
tions to their own advantage, the fraction of monastic 
revenues which was saved to education was enough 
to justify the process in large degree, for this fraction 
did more good than the whole was doing or likely 
to do. 

With the Reformation arose a new and characteris- 
tic order, which may be called the modern exempli- 
fication of the monastic system, and at the same time 
the greatest witness against it — the Society of Jesus, 
usually called the Jesuits. In a certain degree this 
order is the antithesis of the old monastic orders ; 



The Jesuits, 197 

for it substitutes for the retirement and contempla- 
tive life of these, habitual intercourse with society ; 
for democracy, despotism ; for localization of abode, 
the greatest facility of change. More determinative 
of the differences which have ultimately exhibited 
themselves, was the demand of a perfect submission 
of the personality and the will to the commands of 
the superior, with its associated ideal, that the inter- 
ests of the society should be made the supreme 
object of attainment, w^hatever other interests might 
seem to conflict. And, not the least important, it 
was provided that the society should remain the 
supreme object of devotion to the Jesuit by forbid- 
ding him to accept any post independent of it except 
upon the positive command of the pope. The 
ancient principle of obedience thus received a very 
great extension in this new monasticism, so as to 
detach the Jesuit as perfectly as possible from every 
earthly tie but that to his society, and to use him 
thus detached for the society alone. The object of 
these arrangements was to make a new and efficient 
instrument for the restoration of the Roman Church, 
a kind of " Hght horse " amid the army of the 
Church. In a large degree the purpose was crowned 
with success. The restoration of southern Austria, 
of Bohemia, and of large portions of Germany to 
the bosom of the Church, the successes and deso- 
lations of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, possi- 
bly also the Huguenot wars and massacres in 
France, were all due to the Jesuits. But even among 
the Catholic nations the order has met with well 
nigh universal repudiation. Beginning with Portugal 



igS The Roman System. 

in 1759, the Jesuits were expelled successively from 
France, Spain, Naples, Parma; and in 1773 were 
dissolved by Pope Clement XIV. Though specially 
sworn to obey the pope, they would not obey this 
edict, and maintained an existence in the dominions 
of Frederick II. of Prussia, and in Russia. In 18 14 
they succeeded in procuring their restoration from 
Pope Pius VII. Since that time history is still 
against them, for they have been expelled from Rus- 
sia, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, etc. 
Thus they have fallen into decay, not a decay of 
gross immorality, but a decay of confidence, of fail- 
ure in their largest plans, of failure to gain and re- 
tain the cordial support of even their co-religionists. 
They have, to be sure, molded the doctrines of the 
Church since the day w^hen their members were 
made the theologians at Trent, and have made new 
dogmas in our own time, the immaculate conception 
of Mary, and the Vatican dogma of infallibility. In a 
degree it is true, as one Roman bishop is reported to 
have said: ''We are all Jesuits today;" but, as every 
other apparent success of this order has been the 
prelude to a dreadful and shameful fall, it may be 
questioned whether the doom of the Jesuits does 
not impend over this Jesuitized Church as a whole, 
and ruin draw near it. 

§ 99. The Protestant objection to every form of 
monasticism is that it is a life against nature, and so 
against the will of God. The Church is for human- 
ity as God has constituted it, and it can only be 
sound and safe when it is in immediate contact with 
the men and women to whom it is sent. Put a man 



Mo7iasticism against God^s Order. 199 

or a woman into monastic seclusion from the ordin- 
ary relations of the world, from its responsibilities 
and its discipline, and you put him out of the reach 
of innumerable corrective and sanative influences. 
As celibacy is wrong upon any large scale, because 
men and women are intended of God to live together 
and educate each other, so poverty, when so assumed 
as to involve separation from the common life of 
man, means separation from that contact with tangi- 
ble things which is necessary to preserve touch with 
concrete truth. Let a society set itself up as the 
sole object of devotion, apart from the interests of 
humanity, and it cannot avoid sinking into immoral 
practices and evolving immoral theories as their 
justification. The great principle of human morals 
as given by our Saviour is, '^ Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself," not any single set of neighbors, like 
the Society of Jesus. Restrict the principle, and the 
system of ethics built upon it will be consequently 
restricted. There is a positive danger in devoting 
one's self to reHgion as the business of life, for in 
becoming one's calling religion may lose something 
of the healthfulness which is gained by living it in 
the common relations of life. There is a certain 
separation from corrective influences even in the life 
of a Protestant minister. But add the further and 
wholly unnecessary separation of the celibate Cath- 
olic priest, and you have multiplied the dangers, and 
made still greater the probability of his religion becom- 
ing unreal. Now turn him into a monk, put upon 
him the vow of poverty, and add obedience, and 
then, by a still higher degree of refinement, make 



200 The Roman System. 

that obedience the Jesuitical obedience, and you have 
done a vast deal to render true religion in the man's 
own heart an impossibility, and have almost insured 
the impossibility of his rendering any healthful and 
large service to society and the Church. The Prot- 
estant thinks these statements self-evident : he points 
the doubter for proof to the verdict of the history 
of monasticism in general, and of the Jesuits in 
particular. 

§ ICO. The worship of the saints is another out- 
flow of the doctrine that there may be acquired by 
good works such merit that it can be transferred 
from one person to another. The Council of Trent 
presents the matter thus : ^ 

The holy synod enjoins '' on all bishops . . . that 
they especially instruct the faithful diligently con- 
cerning the intercession and invocation of saints ; the 
honor paid to relics ; and the legitimate use of 
images : teaching them that the saints who reign 
together with Christ offer up their own prayers to 
God for men ; that it is good and useful suppliantly 
to invoke them and to have recourse to their pray- 
ers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God 
through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our 
alone Redeemer and Saviour." "Also, that the holy 
bodies of holy martyrs .... are to be venerated by 

the faithful Moreover, 'that the images of 

Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the 
other saints are to be had .... in temples, and 
that due honor and veneration are to be given them ; 
not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in 

1 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 199 ff. 



Worship of the Saints. 20i 

them, on account of which they are to be wor- 
shiped ; or that anything is to be asked of them ; 
or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old 
done by the gentiles, who placed their hope in idols ; 
but because the honor which is shown to them is 
referred to the prototypes which those images repre- 
sent ; in such wise that by the images which we kiss 
and before which we uncover the head and prostrate 
ourselves, we adore Christ and we venerate the 
saints .whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees 
of councils, and especially of the second Synod of 
Nicea, has been defined against the opponents of 
images." In the immediately following context 
reference is made to the miracles wrought by the 
saints ; and a little further below warnings are intro- 
duced against various abuses connected with the use 
of images, of which '' superstition," " filthy lucre," 
" lasciviousness," '' revelings and drunkenness," 
" luxury and wantonness " are mentioned by name. 
§ lOi. The ideal which the CathoHc entertains in 
respect to these matters may be seen from the fol- 
lowing words of Cardinal Gibbons. He says : ^ 
" To ask the prayers of our brethren in heaven is 
not only conformable to Holy Scripture, but is 
prompted by the instincts of our nature. The Cath- 
olic doctrine of the communion of saints robs death 
of its terrors; while "the Reformers of the sixteenth 
century, in denying the communion of saints, not 
only inflicted a deadly wound on the creed, but also 
severed the tenderest chords of the human heart. 
They broke asunder the holy ties that united earth 

1 F. F., p. 190 -ff. 



202 The Rontait System. 

with heaven, and the soul in the flesh with the soul 
released from the flesh. If my brother leaves me to 
cross the seas, I believe that he continues to pray 
for me. And when he crosses the narrow sea of 
death, and lands upon the shores of eternity, why 
should he not pray for me still ? What does death 
destroy ? The body. The soul still Hves and moves 
and has its being. It thinks and wills and remem- 
bers and loves. The dross of sin and selfishness 
and hatred is burned by the salutary fires o^ contri- 
tion, and nothing remains but the pure gold of 
charity." 

§ 1 02. Protestants have not been altogether insen- 
sible to the force of some of these considerations. 
That the saints pray for us in the heavenly world 
may well be believed; and Protestant piety has 
sometimes ventured to join, in thought at least, the 
ministrations of departed loved ones with those min- 
istrations which we are informed in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews the angels render to the heirs of salva- 
tion. But the question is. Is the practice of invok- 
ing the saints scriptural ? is there any evidence that 
their interest in us is augmented or in any way 
affected by our invocation ? and particularly, is the 
practice safe, and consistent with the honor of the 
"alone Redeemer," and with the preservation of 
Christian worship from the contamination of heathen 
idolatry ? 

§ 103. To these questions Protestants return a 
negative answer, and particularly to the one whether 
the practice is scriptural. Cardinal Gibbons' argu- 
ment that it is, will convince no one who does not 



Scripture Agaiitst Saint Worship. 203 

accept it without any Scripture proof whatever. To 
prove ''that the spirits of the just in heaven are 
clearly conversant with our affairs upon earth," he 
cites Jacob's pious wish upon his deathbed, " the 
angel that delivereth me from all evils bless these 
boys," a passage from the book of Tobit, and sev- 
eral others which are more pertinent. This point 
Protestants will gladly grant him. But he then says, 
*' We have also abundant testimony from Scripture 
to show that the saints assist us by their prayers," 
and for this he urges examples of the prayers of men 
in behalf of one another, but not a case of tlie inter- 
cession of the saints. His eloquent question, " Now 
I ask you, if our friends, though sinners, can aid us 
by their prayers, why cannot our friends, the saints 
of God, be able to assist us also ? " is all the argu- 
ment he presents, and proves nothing as to Scripture 
testimony. And finally, to prove that the saints are 
actually interested in us and pray for us, the cardinal 
quotes 2 Mace. xv. 14; Rev. v. 8; Zech. i. 12, 13, of 
which passages, the first is apocryphal, the second 
might possibly be interpreted in favor of the idea, 
and the third represents an angel in a vision of the 
prophet praying for Jerusalem. This is the sum 
total of the Scripture proof which he can bring. 
Of the Roman practice of invoking the saints there 
appears, after all has been said, not a trace in the 
Bible. 

Over against this failure to find the Scriptures in 
favor of the practice, there is the much more impor- 
tant fact that they are emphatically against that and 
every kindred practice. Among the commands of 



204 The Roman System. 

the decalogue we read, '' Thou shalt not make unto 
thee a graven image, nor the Hkeness of any form 
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth 
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : 
thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor 
serve them : for I the Lord thy God am a jealous 
God." To the tempter in the wilderness the Saviour 
said, '* Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
him only shalt thou serve/' quoting here from Deut. 
vi. 13. These texts are particularly pertinent with 
reference to the distinction which Catholics make 
between '' worship " (^Xarpzia)^ which is to be paid to 
God alone, and "service" {doijXeia)^ which, rmy be 
paid to saints, for Deut. vi. 13 has in the Vulgate, 
Rome's own authentic Bible, ''Doinimun Deum iuum 
twicbis €t illi soli servies." This last word is the 
rendering of the Hebrew 'abhadli, which is the word 
employed in Ex. xx. 5, and reproduced in the Revised 
English Version by the word " serve," as quoted 
above. Thus Rome goes in her *' service " of her 
saints square against the letter of her own Bible. 
But more than this. There are four instances of 
attempted saint worship in the New Testament, and 
in every case it is rebuked. Cornelius fell down at 
Peter's feet as he entered his house upon that great 
day when he first preached the gospel to him, " and 
worshiped him" (Acts x. 25); but Peter said, "Stand 
up; I myself also am a man." Who supposes that 
Cornelius meant to render divine honors to Peter ? 
It was "service" rather than the technical "wor- 
ship ; " and yet it was forbidden. The men of Lys- 
tra attempted to do sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, 



The Bible Against Saint Worship. 205 

and they were rebuked (Acts xiv. 12-15). On two 
separate occasions did the apostle John, when re- 
ceiving revelations at the hand of the " angel," 
attempt to worship him (Rev. xix. 10 and xxii. 8, 9) ; 
but on both occasions was he corrected with the 
words, '' See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow-serv- 
ant, . . . worship God." 

On the other hand, how constant is the New Tes- 
tament representation that Christ is the only media- 
tor, the only w^ay of approach to the Father ! '' No 
man cometh unto the Father but by me " (John xiv. 
6). '' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28). 
" Wherefore he is able also to save them to the utter- 
most that come unto God by him, seeing he ever 
liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. vii. 

25). 

So much for the theory and proof of the matter. 
We may hope, and Rome may guess, that the saints 
are acquainted with our affairs, in some degree at 
least ; but even in this particular we shall have to 
remain where the honest Cajetan, Luther's antago- 
nist at Augsburg, remained when he said, '' We have 
no certain knowledge as to whether the saints are 
aware of our prayers, although we piously believe 
it." ^ But against the invocation of the saints the 
whole authority of the Bible stands indisputable. 
Saint-service is, at best, scarcely distinguishable from 
idolatry. It is inseparably connected with the pres- 
ence and worship of images in the churches. At 
worst, it is idolatry, and it seems to have a tendency 

1 Quoted by Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 32. 



2o6 The Roman System. 

to descend from one degree of corruption to an- 
other. The Christian Pantheon will not long remain 
purer than the heathen was. We are therefore re- 
quired by our theme to look at the actual, as well as 
the theoretical, invocation of the saints in the Catho- 
lic Church. We follow here Littledale, from whom 
the following quotation is taken : ^ 

'' In direct rebellion against the plain letter and 
spirit of both the Old and New Testaments, the 
Roman Church practically compels her children to 
offer far more prayers to deceased human beings 
than they address to the Father or to Christ. It is 
not true, as is often alleged in defense, that the pray- 
ers of the departed saints are asked only in the same 
sense as those of Hving ones, with the added thought 
that they are now more able to pray effectually for 
us. The petitions are not at all limited to a mere 
* Pray for us ; ' but are constantly of exactly the 
same kind and wording as those addressed to 
Almighty God, and are offered kneeling, and in the 
course of divine service, which is not how we ever 
ask the prayers of living friends. A few specimens 
are here set down from the Raccolta (English trans- 
lation, Burns and Oates, 1873), ^ collection of 
prayers specially indulgenced by the popes, and 
therefore of indisputable authority in the Roman 
Church. 

I. "'Hail, Queen, Mother of Mercy, our Life, 
Sweetness, and Hope, all hail ! To thee we cry, ban- 
ished sons of Eve, to thee we sigh, groaning and 
weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, O our 

* Ibid., p. 30 f. 



Invocations of Saints. 207 

Advocate, thy merciful eyes to us, and after this our 
exile, show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, 
O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary/ 

" ' V. Make me worthy to praise thee, O sacred 
Virgin/ 

^^ * R. Give me strength against thine enemies/ 

2. '' ' We fly beneath thy shelter, O holy Mother 
of God, despise not our petitions in our necessities, 
and deliver us always from all perils, O glorious and 
blessed Virgin/ 

3. '' ' Heart of Mary, Mother of God . . . worthy 
of all the veneration of angels and men . . . Heart 
full of goodness, ever-compassionate toward our 
sufferings, vouchsafe to thaw our icy hearts ... In 
thee let the holy Church find safe shelter ; protect 
it, and be its sweet asylum, its tower of strength. 
... Be thou our help in need, our comfort in trouble, 
our strength in temptation, our refuge in persecution, 
our aid in all dangers . . .' 

4. '' ' Sweet heart of Mary, be my salvation.' 

5. *' * Leave me not, my Mother, in my own hands, 
or I am lost. Let me but cling to thee. Save me, 
my Hope ; save me from hell/ 

6. '' ' Michael, glorious prince, chief and companion 
of the heavenly host . . . vouchsafe to free us all 
from every evil, who with full confidence have re- 
course to thee.* 

7. '' ' Benign Joseph, our Guide, protect us and the 
holy Church.' 

8. ** ' Guardian of virgins, and holy father Joseph, 
to whose faithful keeping Christ Jesus, innocence 
itself, and Mary, Virgin of virgins, were committed. 



2o8 The Roman System. 

I pray and beseech thee, by those two dear pledges, 
Jesus and Mary, that, being preserved from all un- 
cleanness, I may with spotless mind, pure heart, and 
chaste body, ever most chastely serve Jesus and 
Mary. Amen.' " 

This long extract will suffice to show how com- 
pletely in practice the '' service " given to the saints 
coalesces with the " worship " which is due to God 
alone. It were easy, but scarcely profitable, to go 
more into the detail of these abuses of a custom 
whose easy liability to such abuse is but one of the 
arguments against it. Hase has accumulated a large 
number of illustrations of the almost incredible fol- 
lies and superstitions which gather around the prac- 
tice. But we content ourselves with the reference. 

§ 104. Not less liable to abuse is the practice of 
canonization. Nominally this task has been taken 
in hand by the pope to prevent it from abuse by 
local bishops acting under various disturbing influ- 
ences, such as local pride, haste in investigating, etc. 
It is now a long process, regulated by distinct 
methods of procedure. There are two grades of 
blessedness : beatification, which is pronounced of one 
who has lived a pious life and wTought miracles ; and 
sanctification, which requires the proof that the per- 
son in question still possesses the power of miracles, 
evidenced by their being wrought at his tomb. Ac- 
cording to theory, canonization simply proclaim.s 
upon earth what has long since been accomplished in 
heaven. The judicial process is merely to ascertain 
beyond a doubt what are the facts. But this high 
theoretic position cannot be maintained. It has 



Canonization. 209 

ever been the popular thought that the judicial proc- 
ess of the Church created the saintship of those 
canonized. When on Whitsunday, 1862, Pius IX. 
canonized 26 Japanese martyrs who had perished in 
the year 1597, the bishops, in their address to the 
pope, said : '' They will now assume the protection 
of the Church in a new manner, and will offer at 
their altars above thew first prayer for thee!' This 
altogether unguarded and naive utterance undoubt- 
edly reflects the real position of its authors. How 
preposterous the idea is that a mortal can affect the 
position of saints in heaven, needs no further proof 
than the eagerness of Roman apologists to forestall 
such an interpretation of canonization. But Protes- 
tants will object no less strongly to the validity of 
any earthly judicial process in respect to persons so 
long dead as were these Japanese saints, and about 
whom so little is known. The Roman answer would 
probably be that everything depended upon the evi- 
dence of miraculous powers still exerted at their 
tombs. But this will do little to quiet the difficulties 
of objectors who have had so many reasons to reject 
the whole Catholic theory about modern miracles. 
The suggestion of the pope himself, that he re- 
joiced to " multiply at that serious time intercessors 
in heaven," will seem to Protestants to give both 
the true motive and the unanswerable refutation of 
canonization.^ 

1 Facts from Hase, Polemik, p. 301 f. 
U 



CHAPTER III. 

THE VIRGIN MARY. 

§ 105. The doctrine and practice of the Roman 
Church in respect to the Virgin Mary have undergone 
in our own generation a rapid development under 
the lead of the Jesuits, and particularly of the late 
Pope Pius IX. Careful dogmatic definitions do not 
occur, however, before the Council of Trent, nor are 
they very numerous. There is a distinct difference 
to be observed between the popular and the scholas- 
tic theology of every age at this point. A full view 
of our theme will compel us to pay attention to both 
of these theologies ; but, since we are dealing with 
the great and determinative ideas of the Church, it 
will not be necessary to follow all the details of pop- 
ular extravagance upon this subject. Still, as doc- 
trine is of no value except it influence life, and as 
the resulting life is the best commentary upon the 
doctrine, it will not be possible to leave either theol- 
ogy entirely out of the account. 

§ 106. The Council of Trent alludes to the Virgin 
Mary only incidentally. The controversy as to her 
immaculate conception was now in full swing, Sixtus 
IV. having favored this doctrine, and yet (in 1483) 
forbidden either party to declare the opinion of the 
other heretical, since the Church had rendered no 
decision. Pressure was exerted to obtain from the 
210 



Definitions as to Mary, 211 

council a declaration in favor of the immaculate con- 
ception. But the time seemed scarcely ripe, and so 
the council contented itself, under papal instruction, 
with declaring^ ''that it is not its intention to include 
in this decree, where original sin is treated of, the 
blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of 
God ; but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV. 
of happy memory are to be observed." And later : 
" If any one saith that a man ... is able dur- 
ing his whole life to avoid all sins, even those that 
are venial — except by a special privilege from God, 
as the Church holds in regard to the Blessed Virgin : 
Let him be anathema." The profession of the Tri- 
dentine Faith reads : ^ " I most firmly assert that the 
images of Christ, and of the perpetual Virgin the 
Mother of God, and also of other saints, ought to be 
had and retained, and that due honor and veneration 
are to be given them." 

The Roman Catechism is, however, more explicit. 
We read : ^ " We celebrate God by giving him thanks 
because he has endowed the most holy Virgin with 
every celestial gift, and we congratulate the Virgin 
herself upon her singular felicity. Rightly has the 
holy church of God joined with this giving of thanks 
the supplication of the most holy Mother of God by 
which we piously and suppHantly flee to her, that 
she may concihate God for us sinners by her inter- 
cession {ut nobis peccatoribtis sua intercessione concili- 
aret Deuni), and obtain the good things which are 
necessary both to this and to the eternal life. There- 

1 Schaff, vol. ii., pp. 88 and 115. 2 j^id.^ p. 209. 

3 Cat. Rom., iv., v., 8. 



212 The Roman System, 

fore we, exiled children of Eve . . . ought constantly 
to invoke the Mother of Mercy and the Advocate of 
her faithful people, that she may pray for us sinners ; 
and we ought by this prayer to implore aid and help 
from her whose most surpassing merits before God, 
and whose highest good will for assisting men, no 
one can doubt without impiety." 

§ 107. The final element in the official definition 
of the doctrine of the Virgin was added by Pope 
Pius IX., who in 1849 issued an encyclical letter in- 
quiring of the bishops as to the propriety and time- 
liness of a definition of the immaculate conception. 
The answers proving sufficiently favorable, a com- 
mission was appointed the same year upon the ques- 
tion, and in 1854, an assembly of cardinals and 
bishops having expressed their delight in the pros- 
pect of the definition of the doctrine, upon Decem- 
ber 8th the pope, *^ under the inspiration of the 
Holy Ghost," by the authority of Christ and the 
apostles Peter and Paul, " and in his own authority " 
issued the following : " We proiiounce, declare, and 
define^ that the doctrine which holds the Blessed 
Virgin Mary to have been, from the first instant of 
her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of 
Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus 
the Saviour of mankind, preserved free from all 
stain of original sin, was revealed by God, and is, 
therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all 
the faithful." 2 

It will be scarcely necessary to remark that this 

^ Compare Heinrich's definition of cathedratic, J 19, above. 
2 Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., p. 211 f. 



Points of the Doctrine. 213 

pronunciamento of the pope's, though put out upon 
his own authority alone, without the assistance or 
approval of an ecumenical council, must now be 
considered, in consequence of the Vatican Council, 
as the official belief of the Church, since it bears the 
marks of an ex cathedra utterance, and is therefore 
'' irreformable in itself" 

Such, then, is the Roman doctrine as to Mary, 
and it includes the following five points, (i) her 
immaculate conception, (2) her sinlessness, (3) 
her perpetual virginity, (4) her possession of at- 
tributes well-nigh divine, (5) her intercessory office 
with God the Father, and even with her Son, Jesus 
Christ. 

§ 108. These ideas have gained an exceedingly 
powerful hold upon the Roman form of Christianity, 
as the most superficial attention to rituals and customs 
will make evident. They have their origin partly in 
the reverence which is felt for one in so close a con- 
nection with the Saviour as was his mother.^ The 
sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and espe- 
cially of maternity, have made the thought of her 
intercession with God, the Almighty and dreadful 
Sovereign, and even with Jesus Christ, *^ who shall 
come to be our Judge," welcome to fearful sinners 
who contemplate the divine Being too exclusively 
under these aspects. Poetry and art have lent their 
aid at different epochs of the Church. And, possibly, 
a still deeper reason can be found in the suggestion 

1 See Gibbons' F. F., p. 194 ff, " We cannot conceive y he says, 
" Mary to have been ever profaned by sin, who was the chosen vessel 
of election, even the Mother of God." 



214 ^^^^ Roman System, 

of the Protestant Steitz/ that Mary represents the 
Church, the virgin bride of Christ. This suggestion 
appears first in Aquinas, who appeals to Augustine. 
According to this idea, in honoring so highly the 
Virgin, the people honor the essential attributes of 
the Church as conceived by Catholics. 

§ 109. But the important question — important for 
Catholic as well as Protestant — remains, Is the doc- 
trine true ? Are all these particulars which are 
affirmed of Mary, which lift her so far above ordi- 
nary humanity, rightly ascribed to her? 

We may begin our examination of this question 
with Mary's supposed sinlessness. This point is 
without any positive scriptural support, for no state- 
ment of the kind, and no exception of the mother 
of Jesus from the general assertion that all men have 
sinned, can be found. On the contrary, no very 
strong evidence can be found of any actual sins. 
The Scriptures speak but little of her. There is no 
occasion to speak of any sinfulness of hers more 
than of Stephen's or of Philip's, who are spoken of 
only in terms of commendation, but whom no one 
supposes to have been without sin. Yet two pass- 
ages at least, and possibly three, contain an implied 
or direct rebuke of her. In Mark iii. 21 we read, 
"And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay 
hold on him : for they said, He is beside himself" 
From the context, verse 31, which according to 
Matt. xii. 46 is to be taken in close connection with 
the preceding, we learn that " his friends " were '' his 

^ In the article " Maria," Herzog, Realencyc. This idea appears 
clearly in Heinrich, vol. vii., p. 419 ff. 



Mary not Sinless, 315 

mother and his brethren." They evidently did not 
understand his work, or doubted his mission, which 
would, at least, verge very closely upon the sin of 
unbeHef. Their calls were not permitted to interrupt 
his work (Mark. iii. 33-35). At Cana Mary seems to 
have been guilty of presumption, and was rebuked 
by Jesus (John ii. 1-5). These hints, shght as they 
are, bar any one completely from affirming Mary's 
sinlessness with any positiveness, however free the way 
may be for the cherishing of such an opinion as a 
pious assumption. And here again, as in the case 
of Peter's sojourn at Rome, since CathoHcs lay so 
much stress upon it, and have built up so lofty a 
fabric of legend, poetry, devotion, and even supersti- 
tion upon it as they have, it is of the first importance 
that an indubitable foundation of Scripture proof 
should be estabhshed for it. But this it is impossible 
to find. 

The utter lack in the New Testament of positive 
statement of Mary's sinlessness becomes more im- 
portant when we contrast it with the plainness with 
which the sinlessness of Jesus is stated, and indeed 
emphasized. He himself claims sinlessness (John 
viii. 46) ; it is the foundation of the perfect example 
which he sets us (Matt. xi. 29; cf xii. 50; v. 17; Mark 
xiv. 36; I John. iii. 5, 6), and the necessary condition 
of his being the perfect organ of revelation, since it 
consists in his perfect union of will and life with the 
Father (John x. 27-30, 38; xvii. 20-23; iv. 34; viii. 
29, 55; XV. 10; xiv. 9); and it is repeatedly made 
the argumentative basis in the epistles for his quali- 
fication for his great office of Redeemer (2 Cor. v. 



2i6 The Roman System, 

21 ; Heb. iv. 15 ; vii. 26; I Pet. ii. 22). Now, if so 
self-evident a truth as the sinlessness of him who is 
incarnate deity needs this degree of emphasis, how 
improbable that a truth, possessing so inferior a de- 
gree of antecedent probability as the sinlessness of 
Mary, should be left without a single definite state- 
ment, direct or indirect. We must therefore main- 
tain that this doctrine is an extra-scriptural doctrine, 
whatever else may be said for it. 

§ 1 10. Of course, if Mary was not sinless, she was 
not immaculately conceived so as to be free from all 
stain of original sin. And yet it may be worth while 
to note the utter absence of anything which can be 
called proof for this doctrine also. Pius IX. said 
the doctrine was '' revealed." When ? To whom ? 
Not to writers of the Bible, nor in apostolic times. 
Cardinal Gibbons says that the doctrine is " implied " 
in the Scriptures, and in justification of this claim 
quotes a single verse. Gen. iii. 15, after the Catholic 
version, founded upon the Vulgate : *' I will put enmi- 
ties between thee and the woman, and thy seed and 
her seed; she [Lat. ipsa\ shall crush thy head." The 
cardinal's argument is : '' Therefore the enmity of 
Mary, or the woman, toward the devil, never ad- 
mitted of any momentary reconciliation, which would 
have existed if she were ever subject to original sin." 
Of course, the argument, if it has any force anyway, 
derives what it has from the word " she." But 
the Hebrew text has *' he," referring to ^'seed" 
— that is, to Christ, and the Greek Septuagint 
translates ahrb^^ although it might have put ahrb^ 
since the Greek for seed, aTiepfia^ is neuter. It is 



Not hnmacitlately Conceived. 217 

another case of a doctrine founded upon a mistrans- 
lation. 

It is, however, possibly unfair to dismiss the Cath- 
olic argument with no fuller presentation of it than 
Cardinal Gibbons can give in his brief work. I turn 
therefore to Heinrich, who, in the volume of his 
Dogmatische Tlieologie last issued, has devoted a 
large space to the immaculate conception. It is the 
more necessary to consider him that he begins his 
discussion with the affirmation that " the Holy Scrip- 
tures contain the strongest and clearest arguments 
for the dogma." ^ Heinrich is always vigorous ; and 
in this subject he does not rely upon verbal argu- 
ments, but bases his proof upon what seem to him 
the indisputable requirements of the case. He rests 
nothing upon the Vulgate translation, regarding it 
as a matter of indifference whether the Hebrew reads 
" he " or '' she." " Even in the latter case the seed 
of the woman is the conqueror of the serpent, and 
the woman conquers only by his power. That, 
however, the ' seed of the woman ' is not a collec- 
tive, but an individual, the Redeemer, is clear enough 
from the text itself" ^ He thus abandons the sole 
Scripture argument which Cardinal Gibbons has pre- 
sented. But the argument from the nature of the 
case nevertheless remains, and it is this : '' Messianic 
prophecy connects with the divine Redeemer his 
Virgin Mother, and puts her with him in opposition 
to sin, its originator, and its kingdom. This occurs 

in the proto-evangel Upon the basis of this 

original gospel .... the holy Fathers and the 

^ op. cit., vol. vii., p. 415. 2 Jifid,^ p. 219. 



2i8 The Roman System. 

later teachers of the Church viewed Mary in antith- 
esis to the first sinful Eve, from whom destruction 
took its origin, as the second, sinless Eve, through 
whom God has given us the Saviour, and who has 
been placed by his side as his helper in the work of 
our salvation. In like manner the Church also re- 
fers the words of the proto-evangel to the mystery 
of the immaculate conception." ^ 

But how vain, after all, is the argument ! What 
evidence that Mary is in any way referred to in this 
passage ? Equally short do the other passages cited 
for the doctrine fall. The expressions of the angel 
at the annunciation, "highly favored," ''the Lord is 
with thee ;" and Elisabeth's *' blessed art thou among 
women," are next quoted, and thus explained : '' They 
express what Mary already was before the Eternal 
Word became her Son, in order to be worthy of this, 
her divine motherhood. So long as Mary exists is 
she the ' highly favored,' the full of grace absolutely, 
the Lord is with her and she belongs entirely to the 
Lord."^ Here again the parallel to Eve is empha- 
sized and developed. Next, the great vision of Rev. 
xii. is cited. " There can be no doubt that the orig- 
inal of the woman who symbolizes the Church, the 
spotless bride of Christ, is Mary." ^ Now, evidently, 
the only force of the argument to this point is the 
force of an allegory ; and it is upon open allegory 
that the remainder of the argument is conducted. 
'* The Church is right " in referring to Mary the bride 
of Solomon's song, the King's bride in the psalms, 

i /^i^., p. 4i6f. 2/3/^ p, 418. 

3 Ibid., p. 419. 



The Argument Allegorical, 219 

Jerusalem, Zion, and the temple, etc. Even the 
" Wisdom " of Proverbs, which refers primarily to 
the incarnation of the Son of God, also refers to the 
eternal election, and especially to the immaculate 
conception, of Mary ! And then, as there are numer- 
ous types of Christ in the Old Testament, that book 
is found to abound with types of Mary ^ such as, first 
of all, Eve, then all the holy women of the Old Tes- 
tament, then paradise, the true ark, the dove with 
the olive branch, the rainbow, Jacob's ladder, the 
tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the vessels con- 
taining the manna, the holy temple mount, then 
every holy mountain, the tower of David, the throne 
of Solomon, the burning bush, Aaron's rod, Gideon's 
fleece, etc. Is all this legitimate exegesis ? No ! 
And, strange to say, Heinrich ultimately does not at 
all pretend that it is. With admirable candor, he, or 
more probably his continuator, Gutberlet, says : 
*^ Ecclesiastical science stands under the direetion of 
the infallible teaching office of the Chwxh. It is there- 
fore the Holy Ghost who communicates to the 
Church the full understanding of the doctrines of 
revelation. Therefore, by the definition of the im- 
maculate conception that meaning of the teachings 
of revelation has been finally fixed which was depos- 
ited in the same at their inspiration. We know now 
with infallible certainty that the immaculate concep- 
tion is really involved in the perfect holiness of Mary, 
as this is taught in revelation. We are at this point 
in a better case than we are when by means of purely 
exegetical helps we arrive, more or less immediately, 
at an article of faith as the contents of any text of 



2 20 The Roman System. 

Holy Scripture." And, a little before, *' as definitely 
formulated in the dogmatic bull of Pius IX., our doc- 
trhic is certainly not contained either in Scripture or 
in tradition. But these contain certainly the doc- 
trine of the most perfect holiness and purity of Mary, 
and of her perfect immunity from every curse and 
from all the power of the devil. In this the immac- 
ulate conception is substantially contained."^ That 
is to say, in plain terms, the Scripture proof of this 
doctrine must be given up. Whatever it is, the im- 
maculate conception is not a scriptural doctrine. 

§ III. The case stands even worse with the per- 
petual virginity of Mary. This is positively against 
the New Testament. We are repeatedly informed 
that Jesus had '* brethren " (Matt. xii. 46; Mark iii. 
31 ; vi. 3, where '' sisters " are also mentioned ; Luke 
viii. 19; John ii. 12; vii. 3, 5). The natural meaning 
of these passages, that Mary bore children to Joseph 
after Jesus' birth, is strengthened, and one might well 
say rendered indubitable, by Matt. i. 25, where we 
read, Joseph '' knew her not //// she had brought 
forth a son : and he called his name Jesus." Cardi- 
nal Gibbons follows the uncritical text, and cites the 
passage, '' brought forth her firstborn son," and 
these words, though apparently introduced into the 
text from Luke ii. 7, where they are undisputed, 
heighten the implication that Mary subsequently to 
the birth of Jesus had other children. The cardinal 
maintains that there is no implication of subsequent 
intercourse between Mary and Joseph in this passage 
any more than of Samuel's ever seeing Saul in the 

^ Ibid., p. 447. 



Perpetual Virginity, 22 1 

passage (i Sam. xv. 35), '^And Samuel came no 
more to see Saul until the day of his death." But 
surely there is an immense difference in these pass- 
ages. It was a matter of course that Samuel would 
not come after his own death ; and the implication 
would have been very different if it had read, '^ saw 
him no more till he had anointed David!' Now, 
this subsequent expectation, that there should be no 
visiting after death, is quite reversed in the case of 
the intercourse of a man and his wife. In case there 
is nothing to contradict that expectation, it must be 
regarded as having been fulfilled. 

In fact, the argument for the perpetual virginity 
of Mary is really a dogmatic one, and that of a 
doubtful descent, for it comes straight from Gnosti- 
cism. The Protestant bishop Bull, the famous de- 
fender of the Nicene Creed, is quoted by Cardinal 
Gibbons as saying that " it cannot with decency be 
imagined that the most holy vessel which was once 
consecrated to be a receptacle of the deity, should 
be afterwards desecrated and prof aned by human use!' 
Here is the old idea, which is the fruitful mother of 
all the errors of the Roman Church upon the sub- 
ject of marriage and celibacy, that there is some- 
thing contaminating and degrading in the functions 
pertaining to birth. There is absolutely nothing in 
Scripture^ or right reason for this idea, and the 
"brethren" of Jesus may well stand as a proof to all 



1 Not even such passages as Lev. xii. 6, where a "sin offering" is 
demanded for a woman after childbirth, can be quoted here; for a 
"sin offering" in Leviticus does not always imply sin in the ethical 
sense of that word. 



222 The Roman Syste7n, 

time how differently the divine purity has viewed 
these subjects from the morahsts of a Church still 
infected with the leaven of heathenism and Gnosti- 
cism. The holy use of the flesh is holy. 

The excrescences of the dogmatic argument are 
strongly against it. The '' perpetual " virgin, it has 
been thought, must be a virgin even in giving birth, 
and hence it has been gravely argued that this event 
occurred clanso utero. Thus the birth is itself a mira- 
cle, or, better, it is a docetic phenomenon, something 
unreal. This will verge perilously near upon making 
the humanity of Christ all unreal. But into these 
depths we will not descend.^ 

To return to Cardinal Gibbons for a moment be- 
fore leaving this topic, he has sought to evacuate 
the argument that the brethren of Jesus were his 
true brothers, and to make them his cousins, by 
identifying Mary the wife of Clopas, mentioned in 
John as having been at the cross, with the Mary, the 
mother of James and Joses, mentioned in Matthew 
and Mark.^ The only link of connection between 
the two is the fact that both are at the cross. It is 
certainly strange that the mother of Jesus should 
have been designated as the mother of James while 
describing the crucifixion, and therefore this Mary 
may have well been another — an argument which 
we may readily grant to have some force ; but what 
force it possesses is nullified by the still greater 

1 Heinrich discusses this point at considerable length, vol. vii. p. 
402 ff. The Fathers support it by allegory, of which that derived from 
John XX. 19, is a favorite example. 

2 Heiiirich's argument (vii., p. 407) is the same, and no more cogent. 



Drift of Mariolatry, 223 

strangeness that would arise from the entire omis- 
sion of reference to the presence of the Virgin Mary 
at the cross by Matthew and Mark which would thus 
be created. We are therefore left to interpret this 
passage, which is dark, by the plainer passages 
upon the ^'brethren/' which have been already 
cited. The general poverty of the cardinal's 
argument is nowhere better shown than by his 
effort to prove the perpetual virginity of Mary 
from the use of the word Virgin in the Apos- 
tles' and the Nicene Creeds, since ''that epithet cannot 
be restricted to the time of our Saviour's birth, but 
must be referred to her whole life, inasmuch as both 
creeds were compiled long after she had passed azvayT 
Just as if to call Washington " President Washing- 
ton " to-day would imply that he died in office ! 

§ 112. After all, the great objection to the Cath- 
olic view of Mary is not to be gained from individual 
texts, for it lies rather in the whole drift of Mariolatry 
away from the tone of biblical piety. As an object 
of worship, constant and universal, and of entreaty 
for all conceivable benefits, she would seem to re- 
quire the divine attributes of omnipresence, omnis- 
cience, and omnipotence. These are the incom- 
municable properties of the divine, and can never be 
the possession of a creature, which, after all, Mary is. 
Then, there seem to be various Virgins. '' Our Lady 
of Lourdes " will do things which the Virgin suppli- 
cated by some poor sufferer in the wilds of the Amer- 
ican frontier, wha can never go to France, will never 
grant. That seems neither like a being almost divine, 
such as Mary, nor even like an ordinary, fair, and 



224 ^^^ Ro7nan System, 

kind earthly woman. Why will the Virgin work 
certain miracles in connection with some images of 
herself which she will never work elsewhere ? Who 
is the true Virgin, the Queen in heaven, or the black 
image in the church at Rome ? And worse yet, if 
possible, the entire conception of the mediatorial 
office of Mary is an affi'ont and impertinence toward 
the "one mediator" (i Tim. ii. 5) between God and 
man, Jesus Christ. Those views of God which make 
other mediators necessary, and particularly that view 
of Christ which renders him the implacable Judge, 
needing the tender pleading of his mother to soften 
his heart toward penitents, are born of ignorance of 
what our God and our Redeemer are ! How the 
love of God is emphasized by Jesus in that micro- 
evangel, '^ God so loved the world, that he gave his 
only Son" (John iii. 16), and how the perfect sym- 
pathy of the Redeemer with sinners, since he was 
*^in all points tempted Hke as we are" (Heb. iv. 15), 
forms the burden of one whole epistle ! Place by 
the side of these texts Liguori's sentences : " At the 
command of the Virgin all things obey^ even God',' 
and *' The salvation of all depends upon their being 
favored and protected by Mary. He who is pro- 
tected by Mary will be saved ; he who is not will be 
lost ;" and it will be safe to leave to the religious 
sense of any candid Catholic to find suitable words 
to characterize them. Said one young man, in proc- 
ess of education for the Protestant ministry, who 
had been brought up a Catholic : '' When I read the 
prayers to the Virgin which I used to employ, I 
shudder." 



Infallibility Again, 225 

§ 113. I pause to interject at this point the re- 
mark that our review of the Roman system has 
brought us again face to face with the infalHble 
authority of the Church. The doctrine of Mary 
cannot be maintained from the Scriptures, but re- 
quires for its support, as does even its interpretation 
of the Bible, an appeal to the teaching office of the 
Church. We have already noted that the whole doc- 
trine of the Church depends upon the doctrine of in- 
fallibility; that the identification of the visible with the 
true Church halts till infallibility is assumed; that cath- 
olicity and unity cannot be established till her exclu- 
siveness is proved by her authority to declare who 
is, and who is not, a member of the body of Christ ; 
that her connection with Peter depends upon her 
own traditions, or upon her authority ; and that her 
holiness is in the same case. Now we find her doc- 
trine of Mary, one of her most distinguishing doc- 
trines at the present hour, resting solely upon her 
authority to teach the truth without Scripture au- 
thority, and even against it. The Roman Church, 
when it presents so great a doctrine as infallibility 
for the acceptance of Christians, certainly ought to 
be wiUing that it should be tested. But the great 
and decisive test is to be found in the facts. Has 
the Church displayed infallibility ? Is she right, for 
example, in this doctrine of Mary? When we ex- 
amine it we find that it depends upon that very in- 
fallibility for its proof Infallibility is to be tested 
by this doctrine, and the doctrine itself rests upon 
infallibility ! Truly, the original, and the only inde- 
pendent doctrine that Rome has \s her unfounded 

15 



226 The Roman System. 

and disproved claim to authority to prescribe men's 
faith. 

§ 114. I have reserved for separate consideration 
the history of the doctrine of Mary. We may start in 
our review of this with the fifth century, for Cardinal 
Newman says ^ that " there was in the first ages no 
public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place 
which Saint Mary holds in the economy of grace ; this 
was reserved for the fifth century.'* True, there were 
some indications of what was to be ere this. Cardinal 
Newman mentions the disputed passage in Justin, 
Apol. I. 6, as a proof of the worship of angels at an 
earlier date. The passage reads in the cardinal's 
translation thus : '' But him (God) and the Son who 
came from him, and taught us these things, and the 
host of the other good angels who follow and re- 
semble him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship 
and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honor, 
and not grudging to deliver to any one who wishes 
to learn, as we ourselves also have been taught." ^ 
I will leave this passage to make what impression it 
may, simply remarking that Bishop Coxe, in the 
American edition of the translation of the Ante- 
Nicene Fathers, has inserted a parenthesis which, if 
justified by the general teaching of Justin, removes 
every difficulty, and which finds no obstacle in the 
Greek original, as follows : '* Both him and the Son 
(who came forth from him, and taught us these 
things, and the host of the other good angels who 
follow and are made like to him), and the prophetic 

1 Development of Christian Doctrine, \., iv., ii., 10, 

2 Op. cit., ii., X., iii., 2, 



History of the Doctrme of Mary. 227 

Spirit, we worship and adore/' It is a fact, whether 
this passage is an illustration of it or not, that 
'' since the end of the second century there has 
always been a kind of side-rehgion, a subterranean 
religion of the second order, varying according to 
the differences of the peoples, but everywhere aUke 
in its gross superstition, its naive docetism, its dual- 
ism and polytheism. ... It is the worship of angels 
(demi-gods) and demons, the high valuation of 
pictures, relics, and amulets, a weaker or stronger 
enthusiasm for the severest asceticism (whence also 
strongly dualistic conceptions), and the anxious 
observance of certain words, signs, rites, ceremonies, 
places, and times, which are regarded as holy. There 
probably never was a time when Christendom was 
free from this ' Christianity,' and there will never 
be one in which it will entirely overcome it."^ 

Beginning the history, then, in the fifth century, it 
was the adoption of the word Theotokos, Mother of 
God, in designation of the Virgin, which gave the 
first great impulse to her cult. Yet, in spite of the 
extravagant expressions of Cyril in his sermon after 
the Council of Ephesus there was no especial form 
prescribed for her worship. After the Synod of 
Nice (787) statues and pictures of the Virgin became 
common both in the East and in the West, candles 
were lighted before them, incense burned, and 
prayers offered. The Christianization of Germany 
opened a new field for the worship of the Virgin among 
a stock which had always been noted for its reverence 
for woman. With the eleventh century the venera- 

1 Harnack, Dogmefigeschichte^ vol. ii., p. 441 f. 



228 The Ro7nan System. 

tion of Mary took on new proportions. Peter Dami- 
ani calls her the perfected creature, styling her 
" deificata " (made divine). Now an office was pre- 
scribed, and a day consecrated to her, Saturday. 
Hymns to her became frequent. Numerous mon- 
asteries and convents were dedicated to her. The 
orders favored her. With the Reformation arose 
in Catholic circles, by reaction, especially among 
the Jesuits, a new enthusiasm for the Virgin. And, 
from this time on, the approach was made with in- 
creasing rapidity to the general acceptance and the 
promulgation of the immaculate conception.^ Pas- 
chasius Radbertus (d. 865), who also promulgated 
the doctrine of transubstantiation, declared that 
Mary was already sanctified in the womb of her 
mother. Anselm of Canterbury was against the 
immaculate conception. Yet in 1140, at Lyons, 
France, a festival was established in honor of the im- 
maculate conception. This led Bernard of Clairvaux 
to oppose the doctrine. True, he said, Mary was 
already sanctified in the womb, and was also pre- 
served from all actual sin ; but she was not immacu- 
lately conceived, else her parents also must have 
been thus conceived. Aquinas opposed the immacu- 
late conception on the ground that Christ was the 
Redeemer of all men, and so of her also, which he 
would not have been if she was free from every 
stain of original, as well as actual, sin. But scho- 
lasticism soon found a way to meet this difficulty, 
and it was held that the anticipatory operation of 
redemption had provided for her immaculate concep- 

1 Harnack, op, cit., vol. iii., p. 558 ff. 



Gutberlet^ s Version, 229 

tion. Scotus, therefore, regarded the immaculate 
conception as '^probable," and after him the Fran- 
ciscans contended for the doctrine, in opposition to 
the Dominicans, who followed their own great theo- 
logian, Aquinas. The outcome of the contest has 
been already sufficiently told in the earlier part of 
this chapter. 

§ 115. We are fortunate in having a general re- 
view of this history by Gutberlet in Heinrich. After 
quoting Harnack's remark in his Dogmengeschichte ^ 
that '* the history of the veneration of Mary is 
throughout a history in which the superstitious, 
ecclesiastical, and monastic rehgion has worked up- 
ward from its dark depths and has determined 
theology, which only slowly submitted to it," he 
says : — 

" The real state of the case is as follows : The 
passages of the Holy Scripture which treat of the 
excellences of Mary would admit, considered gram- 
matically alone, a dry, meager interpretation, such as 
heretics and other despisers of the veneration of Mary 
maintain. But when we consider the person to whom 
those excellences are ascribed, they must be under- 
stood in a way to correspond to the high dignity of 
the same : the conferment of grace, for example, 
must be conceived as one corresponding to the 
divine motherhood, and hence to the highest dignity 
and function which a creature can receive. The 
more, now, Christendom gains a consciousness of 
this dignity, the more perfectly will the fullness of 
Mary's grace be apprehended and comprehended. 
We must certainly grant that the dignity of the 



230 The Roma7t System, 

Mother of God was progressively brought to the 
consciousness of the Church from beneath upward 
by the Christian people, by the pious and un- 
sophisticated, especially also by the monks, and 
that, above all, by practical veneration/ Here also 
the proverb holds : What the understanding of the 
wise perceives not, that the childlike heart practiceth 
in simplicity. From century to century the venera- 
tion of Mary grew more profound, the conception of 
the dignity of the Mother of God, and of the full- 
ness of the grace thereby given her, more mighty. 
Consequently the conviction was gradually formed 
that such a gift of grace was irreconcilable with 
original sin, and the ' simplices ' celebrated the im- 
maculate conception and affirmed it regardless of 
the dogmatic difficulties which were thereby created.^ 
Wherefore theology was now compelled to take a 
hand, whether for evil or for good : the discussion 
of the subject was forced upon her. She maintained 
for a long time an attitude of disinclination. The 
most correct among theologians even raised their 
protest, maintaining, to be sure, with all Christen- 
dom, that the highest degree of grace was bestowed 
upon the Mother of God — yes, even explaining it 
more exactly and amplifying it, but regarding, on the 
other hand, the immaculate conception as irreconcil- 

1 It is true, then, according to both parties, that monasticism is the 
ground in which Mariolatry has largely flourished. The probability 
of the purity of the product will be judged according to the estima- 
tion of the source. Of this, Protestants have a poor opinion. 

2 It is not "dogmatic" difficulties which Protestantism chiefly 
feels, but exegetical and practical. But of the Scriptures the monks 
of the fifth century were in general profoundly ignorant. 



Argument froTfi Development, 231 

able with other dogmas. Yet the high conception of 
the grace of the Mother of God became stronger, 
the difficulties were more and more resolved; or 
their resolution found more and more recognition : 
and so the time came when all Christendom (to 
speak the substantial truth) — people, theologians, and 
hierarchy — w^ere at one in its recognition, and thereby 
the notes of a traditional article of faith were fully 
given, and the definition could be pronounced. 

" This was, in a certain sense, a movement from 
beneath upward, but, in fact, the first movement be- 
gan above, and thus returned to its starting point, or, 
more accurately, it remained ever on its original high 
plane. The teaching Church gave to Christendom 
those excellences of the Mother of God in which the 
immaculate conception is involved; the hierarchy 
superintended and guided the veneration of Mary; 
under the oversight of the same have people and 
theologians recognized in the perfections of Mary 
this of the immaculate conception also." ^ 

§ 116. Now, evidently, we face here a quite differ- 
ent state of things from that which has so often con- 
fronted us in the examination of Roman doctrine. 
We have here what Cardinal Newman styled a " de- 
velopment," an expression which, since his work upon 
this subject, has acquired a still greater currency 
from the rise of the theory of evolution in natural 
science, and from the application of theories of de- 
velopment to all history, and to all departments of 
human inquiry. We have the steady progress of an 
idea from comparatively small beginnings, by means 

^ op. cit,, vol. vii., p. 448 f. 



^7,2 The Roman System. 

of successive and slight additions, to the fully matured 
doctrine of the Virgin, as sharing the government of 
the world, as possessing intercessory offices, as the 
object of '' hyperduleia," and as not only sinless, but 
immaculately conceived. Is not this development 
one of the strongest possible arguments in favor of 
the truth of the doctrine ? In its light, are not the 
faint beginnings, not merely in spite of their faintness, 
but in consequence of that faintness, positive proofs 
of the doctrine ? Is it not one of those truths which, 
not of immediate necessity to the infant Church, 
or belonging to the central doctrines of the Chris- 
tian system, were merely indicated at first, but which 
increasing Hght has brought out into an ever 
clearer relief? In respect to the supremacy of 
Peter, it is a sufficient refutation to show that noth- 
ing was known of such a supremacy in the New 
Testament times or in the earliest ages of the Church, 
for if there was any such supremacy, it was estab- 
lished formally by Christ, and was necessary to the 
very being, and not merely to the well-being of the 
Church. The infallibility of the pope stands in the 
same category. If the present pope is infallible at 
all, it is in consequence of his official character, and 
so all popes, simply because they are popes, are 
therefore infallible. Hence the proof of falHbility in 
a single pope destroys the whole superstructure of 
infallibility. And the same holds true in respect to 
the supreme deity of Christ, which Protestants as 
well as Catholics accept. If we could show that the 
New Testament, or the first generation of fathers 
after the Church emerged from the guidance of the 



Newmaii' s Criteria, 233 

apostles, knew nothing of his divine glory, and did 
not cherish the same attitude toward him which we 
cherish, the argument for his divinity would fall to 
the ground. But the case is not so with this doc- 
trine, the doctrine of Mary. It has no such relative 
importance as that of the deity of Christ, no such 
constitutive character as the supremacy of Peter, or 
the consequent doctrine of infallibility. Does it not 
have its stronghold in the fact of its slow develop- 
ment? 

§ 117. In reply to these questions it may be ad- 
mitted that the argument from development is one 
of the strongest arguments which can be urged for 
any doctrine. But it must be remembered that there 
are not only developments, but also degenerations. 
Not every progress by small increments to a definite 
goal deserves to be called a true development ; and 
the question with respect to the doctrine of Mary, as 
held in the Roman Church, will be. Is it a true prod- 
uct of development ? or, is it an example of degener- 
ation ? 

Cardinal Newman, in his famous book upon The 
Development of CJiristian Doctrine^ has virtually ac- 
knowledged the correctness of the distinction which 
has here been drawn. Indeed, he more than virtu- 
ally acknowledges this, for he has a division of his 
book upon '' Doctrinal Developments Viewed Rela- 
tively to Doctrinal Corruptions," in which he pro- 
ceeds to give the criteria upon which the decision is 
to be made whether any movement is a development 
or a corruption. These criteria are, in general, cor- 
rect. They are seven in number: First, preserva- 



234 The Roman System, 

tion of the type, as a child develops into a man, and 
not into some animal; second, continuity of princi- 
ple, by which is meant some determinative idea, such 
as the principle of private judgment in Protestantism; 
third, power of assimilation, or, as it might be stated, 
adaptability to and harmony with other truth ; fourth, 
logical sequence; fifth, anticipation of the future, or the 
fact that hints of an idea to be fully developed later 
will be hkely to be found at an early point ; sixth, 
conservative action upon the past ; seventh, '' chronic 
vigor," or, in simpler phrase, duration, the power of 
survival. 

With these " notes " of a sound development, we 
may, in general, agree. I shall restate them in my 
own form, more for the purpose of giving them a 
closer apparent connection with a fundamental prin- 
ciple, than because they are not reasonably adequate 
in the form which the cardinal has assigned. 

We must start, then, with the assumption of the 
perfection of the revelation given in our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Catholics will agree with this position, how^- 
ever they may affirm the real character of the in- 
spiration of the Church. At least, eveiy Catholic 
will admit the only position which is of importance 
to Protestantism in this connection, that no subse- 
quent revelation can in any way contradict or cor- 
rect the teachings of Jesus, who, as Incarnate God, 
was the truth itself Tt is but another way of stat- 
ing the same principle w^hen it is said that all Chris- 
tian truth will have its root in the teachings of Jesus 
Christ, and since, for us at least, his teachings are 
identical with the truths delivered by the inspired 



Criteria of Development, 235 

writers of the New Testament, this is the same as to 
maintain that all Christian truth will exist, in germ 
at least, in the New Testament. Subsequent doc- 
trines, however different their form, or however 
larger their apparent inclusion, will only unfold, as 
the flower does, what was formerly infolded, as in 
the bud. A developing idea " changes," as the car- 
dinal says, "in order to remain the same." ^ 

From this assumption we draw four notes of a 
sound development of Christian doctrine. First, the 
development must begin from a germ actually pres- 
ent in the recorded instruction of Jesus Christ and 
his apostles ; second, it must proceed according to 
the laws of logical sequence ; third, it must agree 
with other established Christian doctrines (assimila- 
tion) ; fourth, its developed form must agree with its 
original in substance and vital portion (conservation 
of the past), or it must not contradict sound biblical 
exegesis. 

Now, it is upon these criteria of a sound develop- 
ment that we pronounce, contrary to the cardinal, 
that the doctrine of Mary in the present Roman sys- 
tem is manifestly false. There is no " germ " in the 
Scriptures ; and, however logical the sequence may 
be with which the idea of the immaculate conception, 
once introduced, has progressed, it lacks completely 
the third and fourth criteria, since it neither assimi- 
lates with other, indisputably Christian doctrines, 
such as the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ and the 
sinfulness of humanity, nor can it justify itself by 
exegesis. All these points have been already fully 

1 op. cit., i., i., i., 7. 



236 The Roman System. 

discussed. The argument from development must 
therefore be judged to be a failure. We have in the 
doctrine of Mary in the CathoHc Church a specimen, 
not of legitimate historical development, but of '' cor- 
ruption," of doctrinal degeneration. It agrees only 
with the distinctively Roman system, particularly 
with the idea of infallibility — which Gutberlet defi- 
nitely asserts to have given the decisive element in 
the outcome, and which Cardinal Newman himself 
requires in order to support such a development as 
this is — with saint worship in general, with the idea 
of merits, and with all that sacramental system which 
we are now to consider. Its affiliations are against 
it rather than for it, for we have found these doc- 
trines in part already — and shall find them more and 
more so as we proceed — we have found them de- 
partures from scriptural simplicity and scriptural 
truth, and therefore illegitimate in a professedly 
Christian system. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SACRAMENTS. 

§ ii8. Definition of the Sacraments in Gen- 
eral. A sacrament is defined in the Roman Cate- 
chism as '' the visible sign of invisible grace, instituted 
for our justification." ^ These words are taken from 
Augustine, but they bear in the theology of these 
later days a sense beyond that intended by their 
author. The sacrament is not a mere sign. The 
Council of Trent says (to give a positive form to its 
negative definitions) that '' grace is given through the 
sacraments, so far as God's part is concerned, always 
and to all men;" and that "by the sacraments of the 
new law grace is conferred through the act performed 
{ex opere operatd)!'^^ That is to say, the sacrament 
not only symboHzes the grace, but it also conveys 
the grace it signifies. Or, as Cardinal Gibbons de- 
fines it, " A sacrament is a visible sign instituted by 
Christ, by which grace is conveyed to our souls." ^ 

§ 119. Evidently everything will depend for the 
meaning of the sacraments upon the idea of '' con- 
veyance," or upon the meaning of the phrase '' ex 
opere operato!' The Council of Trent itself defines 
it by parallel phrases, such as '' The sacraments of 
the new law contain the grace which they signify," 

^ Cat. Rom., ii., i., iii. 

^ Schaff, vol. ii., pp. 1 19-122, for this and following quotations. 

3 F. F., p. 304. 

237 



238 The Roma7t System, 

** they confer that grace upon those who do not 
place an obstacle thereto." The meaning of these 
phrases is made the clearer from the agreement 
which exists between them and previous scholastic 
writers, particularly Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, 
and Gabriel Biel. The latter expresses their com- 
mon meaning most plainly in the passage : " The 
sacrament is said to confer grace ex operc operato^ so 
that grace is conferred from the very fact that the 
work, viz., the sacrament, is exhibited, unless the 
obstacle of mortal sin prevents ; so that besides the 
exliibitioji of the sign openly exhibited no good mo- 
tion of the heart is required in him who receives it!' ^ 
This explanation, which is, as it were, the context of 
the Council of Trent's own utterances, renders the 
meaning of the council indubitable. It is, accord- 
ingly, Catholic doctrine that when the sacraments 
are administered, from the simple fact that the thing 
has been done, grace is conveyed to the recipient of 
the outward symbols, whether he exercises or does 
not exercise faith. 

§ 120. Mohler endeavors, in accordance with 
the entire tendency of his book, to give a more 
spiritual interpretation to the matter. He supplies 
the words " a Christo " with ex opere operato, which 
he says is put for " qiiod operatus est Christus '* 
(through that which Christ has done). He con- 
tinues : *' The sacraments convey a divine power 
merited for us by Christ, which can be originated by 
no human disposition, by no spiritual frame and 
effort, but is given by God simply for Christ's sake 

1 Quoted in the original Latin by Hase, p. 347. 



The Opus Operatum. 239 

in the sacrament. Of course, man must receive it, 
and must therefore be receptive, which is expressed 
in penitence and pain for sin, in the longing for divine 
help and in trustful faith ; but he can only receive 
it, and only be receptive. Accordingly, this doctrine 
preserves the objectivity of the divine grace, and pre- 
vents us from reducing the effects of the sacrament 
to the merely subjective, and from cherishing the 
illusion that the same consist merely in a moral 
effect, in the human feeHngs, thoughts, and resolves 
that are excited upon its reception, as at the sight 
of a picture representing the death of Christ, or 
that precede the reception." And he concludes, ^' the 
opus operatum does not posit a merely divine activity 
and involve the inactivity of the man in question." 
He supports himself by an appeal to Bellarmine, 
who says that to the sacrament are required, among 
other things, '' on the part of the recipient, will, faith, 
and penitence ;" and defines finally as follows, that 
" the sacraments conferring grace ex opere operato is 
the same as conferring grace by the operation of the 
sacramental action instituted by God for this pur- 
pose, not by the merit of the agent or of the recipi- 
ent." ' By such representations the operation ascribed 
by CathoHcs to the sacraments would be essentially 
modified. But these are apologetic modifications. 
They do not prove that such is the Roman doctrine. 
Rather they prove that the Roman system, in all its 
strict logical severity and externality, has never been 
received by all its nominal adherents. 

§ 121. To the vahdity of the sacraments are re- 

1 SymboUk, pp, 255 ff. 



240 The Ro77ia7t Systein, 

quired three things, first, intention ; second, the form 
or the word, in baptism, " I baptize thee in the name 
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost;" 
and third, the matter, in baptism water. The subject 
of '* intention " alone gives any difficulty. The Coun- 
cil of Trent defined it thus : "" There is required in 
ministers, when they effect and confer the sacra- 
ments, the intention at least of doing what the 
Church does." ^ Intention is distinguished into two 
parts, external intention, or the intention seriously to 
administer the sacrament in the form usual in the 
Church; and internal intention, or the intention 
really to do what the Church does in the sacraments. 
A mere immersing in water, which was not designed 
for baptism, though in sport the words " I baptize 
thee, etc.," were employed, would be no valid bap- 
tism ; but, on the other hand, though every form 
were scrupulously observed, if the officiating priest 
did not intend in his soul to celebrate the sacrament 
and effect its special work, it would also be entirely 
invalid. 

§ 122. Upon these two forms of intention there 
has always been active discussion.^ The Gallican 
party generally held that the outward intention was 
enough, for which their great dogmatic argument 
was the idea of the opus opcj^atinn, and their great 
practical one the uncertainty which would be caused 
to hang over every ecclesiastical function, if the valid- 
ity of the sacraments were made to depend upon a 
secret intention which could be known to no one 

1 Schaff, vol. ii., p. 121. 

2 See the rhume in Perrone, vol. iii., p. 54 f., and in Hase, p. 349 f. 



Intention, 241 

but the officiating priest himself. But this party is 
no longer extant in the Roman Church. The 
Italian party, which held the other view, has become 
triumphant ; and the principal argument which they 
have employed is one that accords well with their 
whole system, the necessity, if the full idea of the 
priesthood is to be retained, that the priest should 
be a real dispenser of the mysteries of God — that is, 
that without his distinct purpose to dispense them 
they should not be given. By a strange inconsist- 
ency in a party which makes so much of the neces- 
sity of an infallible certainty in matters of religion, 
they pass very lightly over the difficulty of the Gal- 
licans, and say that we must suppose there is the 
intention when the sacrament is administered. God 
can provide the "interior disposition ;" and some- 
thing must be left to his providence. We shall be 
perfectly safe in regarding the real Catholic doctrine 
as this, that the '' internal " intention is necessary to 
the actuahty of every sacrament. Without it nothing 
gracious is done. The condemnation which Alexan- 
der VIII. pronounced upon the proposition : " The 
baptism performed by a minister who observes every 
external rite and the form of baptism, but within, in 
his heart, resolves with himself, ' I do not iiltend to 
do what the Church does,' is vaKd;" puts, by a de- 
cision probably ex cathedra, the authoritative inter- 
pretation upon the Council of Trent. We should 
note, finally, that the personal worthiness of the 
priest, or his intention to do good or evil through 
the sacraments, does not affect their validity. 

§ 123. The number of the sacraments, after long 

16 



2^2 The Roma7i System. 

vacillation, illustrating the character of the tendency 
which brought about the result as a purely extra- 
biblical one, was at last formally set by the Council 
of Trent at seven, all of which were declared to have 
been "instituted by Christ." They are, baptism, 
confirmation, the Lord's Supper, penance, extreme 
unction, order, and matrimony. All are not neces- 
sary for all believers, nor are all of equal dignity. 

§ 124. Ideal. As to this, little is to be said, for 
Mohler, upon whom we must rely at this point,^ 
contents himself with a brief expansion of the par- 
ticulars brought out in the Roman Catechism. Just 
as man needs a visible church, placed as he is in a 
visible world and in a corporeal frame, so he needs 
the visible sacraments to call to mind and to fix in 
his attention and mental grasp the invisible grace of 
God. Then, the sacraments are pledges and seals 
of the promises of God. It is difficult to bring man 
to faith ; hence in the New Testament various means 
are employed to assist faith, among which are the 
sacraments. Then, they are channels, which convey 
the grace of God {quasi alvetis^ like a riverbed). They 
are the means of confession, and the tokens by which 
Christians know each other. And, as man has vol- 
untarily submitted to the sinful rule of the world, so 
he is here compelled to make use of the elements of 
the world in his spiritual elevation, thus humbhng 
himself to the use of things apparently mean. 

§ 125. Protestants, first of all, reject the number 
seven. There is no evidence in the New Testament 
that our Lord intended to institute any sacrament 

^ op. cit., p. 254 f. 



Number of the Sacrameitts. 243 

except those two universally recognized in the Chris- 
tian Church, viz., baptism and the Lord's Supper. 
The insufificiency of the Roman proof from Scripture 
may be seen from the fact that the only support for 
that important sacrament, extreme unction, is to be 
found in James v. 14, 15. A much clearer argument 
might have been founded upon John xiii. 14, 15, for 
feet washing as a sacrament, for our Lord says ex- 
plicitly : " I have given you an example, that ye also 
should do as I have done to you." Yet the Roman 
Church has never made it a sacrament, though it is 
annually observed at Rome as a holy ceremony. 
The difficulty arising from this paucity of scriptural 
proof is increased by the consideration that the Ro- 
man Church says that all the seven sacraments were 
'' instituted by Christ." If this is so, they ought to 
be in the New Testament, or at least they ought to 
appear in the early history of the Church. But 
neither of these expectations is fulfilled. John of 
Damascus (flourished about 750) betrays no knowl- 
edge of any sacraments besides the two received by 
all Christians. Neither do the Greek fathers before 
him. Peter Lombard is the first to fix upon the 
number seven, and the Council of Florence (1429) 
was the first authoritative body to settle upon this 
number. Such a state of things is inconceivable if 
the Roman doctrine is right. 

§ 126. Still more strongly, if possible, do Protes- 
tants object to the opus operatiim. They have no 
objection to make to the objectivity of grace, and do 
not themselves by any means maintain the position 
that its effects consist simply in the feelings which 



244 T^^^ Roman System, 

so affecting an exhibition as the Lord's Supper is 
well calculated to produce. There is an objective 
work of the sacraments which all Protestants would 
assert, however they might differ at other points, viz., 
the work of pledging in God's name his grace to 
those who have fulfilled the conditions for its recep- 
tion. There is no special objection in any Protes- 
tant's mind to the points which Mohler makes in his 
summary of the Catechism, except to the analogy of 
the *' riverbed " and its implications, to the impli- 
cation also of the kind of the "need" — that is, the 
indispensable necessity — of the sacraments as visible 
tokens to man placed in a world of sense. Still, even 
here the Protestant recognizes a relative necessity. 
But all this is not the optis operatum. That phrase 
interprets the objectivity of grace in such a way as 
to render it independent of the spiritual condition of 
the recipient, especially and emphatically of his faith. 
It makes grace work mechanically and externally, 
and thus transforms religion into an affair of forms 
and ceremonies, instead of one of the innermost soul. 
All this seems to Protestants a radical error. 

Nor have Protestants any objection to the idea 
that mortal sin alone bars the entrance of grace to 
the heart. They hold, however, that all sin is mortal 
sin, w^hen it is indulged and unrepented of. Hence a 
living faith is necessary to the reception of grace, for 
this alone makes a place for repentance. The oppo- 
site of mortal sin is a living union of the heart with 
God, which is therefore necessary to the right recep- 
tion of a sacrament ; and such union is faith. Now, 
doubtless, here as elsewhere, the difference between 



Faith Necessary to a Sacrament, 245 

Catholics and Protestants depends upon a difference 
in the conception of faith. The Roman Church 
views faith in various ways, whereas Protestants mean 
by that faith which is essential to the reception of 
grace the act of the will in surrendering itself abso- 
lutely to God, the fundamental and irreversible choice 
of God as Lord. A man must either have this faith, 
or not have it. If he has no faith, he is an enemy, a 
rebel toward God. Will any candid CathoHc say 
that a man in active rebellion to God does not inter- 
pose an '' obstacle " to the reception of grace through 
the sacraments ? 

Hence Protestants must deny most positively that 
^^ no good motion of the heart is required in him who 
receives " grace through the sacrament. That, viz., 
faith, is the precise thing which is needed. To say 
that God can bestow forgiveness through the euchar- 
ist, for example, without faith upon the part of the 
recipient, is the same as to say that God can agree 
with a man who disagrees with him, or that he can 
approve a man who is, at the moment of approval, 
in sin. Such doctrine needs only to be clearly 
apprehended to be rejected by either Protestant or 
Catholic. Then, in a large portion of the Christian 
life, the conferment of grace is the same with sancti- 
fication through the Holy Ghost. Now, the con- 
dition of the reception of the Holy Ghost is faith, 
John xiv. 21; XV. 4; xiv. 15-17. Particularly in- 
structive here are the examples of the conferment of 
the Holy Ghost recorded in the book of The Acts. 

And finally, the idea of the opus operatitm con- 
founds union with God (which is the thing with 



246 The Roman System. 

which the sacrament has to do) with union with the 
Church. This is a fundamental error, since there 
are bad men, condemned before God, and '' sons of 
perdition," in the Church now as in the original 
apostolic college. Thus the opits operatiim repeats 
the fundamental fallacy of the entire Roman system. 
§ 127. A few words should be added with refer- 
ence to the doctrine of intention. Protestants feel 
no particular necessity of replying to this doctrine 
for their own sake, since it does not affect them as 
it does the Catholic, for their idea of the efficacy of 
the sacraments is quite independent of it. The be- 
liever can erect the symbols of the body and blood 
of Christ into a true and gracious sacrament for 
himself by the adoring contemplation of the divine 
Redeemer through faith, whether the minister *' in- 
tend " to perform the sacramental service or not. 
But the bearing of the doctrine upon the Roman sys- 
tem itself is of the most radical and important charac- 
ter. That whole system is centered about the neces- 
sity of infallible certainty. This is the a priori proof 
of the infallibility of the pope, of the objectivity of the 
sacraments. One must be able to rely with entire 
certainty upon the assurance of the Church that he 
is saved. But now, what if the Church is itself with- 
out orders and without sacraments ? What if, some- 
where in the long line, there has been a fatal gap 
vitiating the orders, and so the capability of perform- 
ing sacerdotal functions, in all the succeeding line 
which is supposed to have handed down the apos- 
tolic grace to our day? Who can be sure that there 
is not ? It is not enough to show that all the popes 



Intention mtd Certainty. 247 

have been regularly consecrated, and that all their 
consecrators have also been, so far as the outward 
form is concerned, which alone can become the ob- 
ject of historical investigation and proof This would 
of itself be an impossibility. But, if it were done, 
who can say that there has always been the '' inten- 
tion " ? that among all the bad men who have 
performed the rites of religion while mocking at 
its reality, there have not been some who willed 
that no orders should be conferred at those vital 
points upon which the whole validity of the Church 
since depends ? Perrone can only answer to this 
awful doubt that we '' must trust providence." The 
w^hole Roman edifice of infallible certainty, then, has 
crumbled, has it ? We must *' trust " ! What is that 
better than Protestantism ? And is it not much 
worse than Protestantism, for this demands only an 
immediate trust in God now and here, while Roman- 
ism demands that we should trust him, that in all 
this almost immeasurably long, and certainly im- 
mensely complicated, system of consecrations for two 
thousand years, there has never been a single lapse 
in the heart of any evil man, leading through lack 
of ^' intention " to the invalidity of Church orders ? 
The CathoHcs may rejoin, Is it more difficult to trust 
God for a great thing than a small ? The Protestant 
will, indeed, reply. No ; but he will also ask, Is it 
worse to trust him for a small thing than a great ? 
to be content with simple trust than to demand a 
'' certainty " which, after all, requires trust, and that 
a trust which is unbiblical in its character and 
enormous in the credulity which it demands and 



248 The Ro7?tdn System, 

the tax which it imposes upon the confidence of the 
believer? No! Either the doctrine of ** intention " 
must be surrendered, or the whole system of papal 
certainty goes by the board, and the very heart of 
the Roman system is lost. And into what fearful 
uncertainty is one educated in the Catholic promises 
thereby thrust when he considers such words as 
those of Bellarmine : " No one can be certain with 
the certainty of faith that he receives a true sacra- 
ment, because the sacrament cannot be vaHd without 
the intention of the minister, and no man can see an- 
other's intention!' ^ And hence even the officiating 
priest, when he knows that he, for his own part, has 
the '' intention," docs not knozu whethcj^ it is of any 
avail, because he cannot know whether he himself 
has been truly ordained. Everything is thus gone ! 

1 Quoted by Littledale, p. 22, from Dispiit. Controv., de Justific. 



CHAPTER V. 

BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION. 

§ 128. The Roman Catechism defines baptism as 
follows : '^ The sacrament of regeneration through 
water in the word." ^ A literal application of the 
text, ^^ Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God ;" ^ and still 
more the objective tendency of the whole system of. 
thought, lead to the most comprehensive interpreta- 
tion of this word " regeneration ;" and hence we must 
further define baptism as the sacrament in which the 
guilt and penalty of original sin, and of actual sin 
committed before baptism, are washed away and re- 
moved," so that neither temporal nor eternal punish- 
ment is to be feared in respect to them,^ though evil 
desires are not all miraculously removed.*^ It is also 
the avenue by which grace comes into the soul.^ It 
is hence necessary to eternal salvation,^ although the 
purpose to be baptized, if hindered by some unex- 
pected and unavoidable obstacle, suffices for baptism 
itself,^ and heretical baptism is valid.^ 

Such are the main ideas. Of more purely formal 
elements we may note that the matter of this sacra- 
ment is water ; the form, the words ^^ I baptize thee 
in the name, etc." It may be performed in cases of 

^ Cat. Rom., ii., ii., iv. 2 John iii. 5. 

3 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xxxi., xxxiii. * Ibid., ii., ii., xxxiii. 

5 Ibid., ii., ii., xxxii. ^ Ibid., ii., ii., xxxviii. 

' Ibid., ii., ii., xxv. ^ Ibid., ii., ii., xxix. 

9 Schaff, ii., p. 123. 

249 



250 The Romaii System, 

necessity by any person, even a heretic, a Jew, or a 
woman/ Such baptism is valid if with the intention 
to do what the Church does.^ It cannot be repeated 
without sacrilege, since it impresses upon the recipi- 
ent a '* character," which is indelible.^ However, a 
person who may not be known to have been bap- 
tized may be baptized again with the formula : ** If 
thou hast been baptized, I do not baptize thee again ; 
but if thou hast not been baptized, I baptize thee, etc." 

The word character, which has here been intro- 
duced for the first time, obtains its ecclesiastical 
meaning from its literal by a natural transfer. It 
signifies a stamp, a seal, such as was impressed upon 
coins. The ''character militaris'' was impressed 
upon soldiers as a mark of the imperial service, and 
remained indelible, although they might forsake the 
service. *' Thus baptism stamps a man indelibly as 
a Christian, and enables him to receive the other 
sacraments ; confirmation makes him a good soldier 
of Christ, and conveys particular powers of confess- 
ing the faith ; by holy order he becomes a minister 
of Christ and is empowered to perform certain sacred 
functions." ^ Hence these three sacraments are not 
to be repeated. 

§ 129. The antithesis of CathoHcism and Protes- 
tanism is not so sharp at this point as at many 
others. Granting that the Roman idea of the sacra- 
ment in general is right, Protestants have, of course, 
no objection to urge on their own account to the 

1 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xviii. 2 Council of Trent, Schaff, ii., p. 123. 

3 Cat. Rom., ii., ii., xli. 

* Catholic Dictionary, art. " Character." 



Heretical Baptism, 251 

extension of valid baptism far beyond the limits of the 
Roman Church. This liberality of construction comes 
undoubtedly from the same tendency as has already 
been noted under the head of the exclusiveness of 
the Church/ the tendency to provide, out of mere 
humanity, a way of salvation for those who without 
their own fault are debarred from membership in the 
Catholic Church. But this, as well as that, is incon- 
sistent with the fundamental principles of the Church 
and. destructive of its claims. And so the Roman 
theologian is put by the divergence of his system 
and his heart between the two horns of a dilemma, 
neither of which he can take, (i) If the baptism of 
heretics, such as all our Protestant baptism is, is suf- 
ficient unto salvation, then the external Church is not 
necessary unto salvation, however helpful it may be, 
and hence it is not identical and conterminous with the 
invisible Church, and the whole Roman system col- 
lapses ; or (2) if the system is to be saved by the 
denial of the validity of heretical baptism, multi- 
tudes of infants, whose parents intend to do what 
the Church does, and give them what they suppose 
to be baptism, are lost for no fault or omission of their 
own. Take the Church and you lose the infants ; 
take the infants and you lose the Church. In either 
case irreparable harm is done. 

§ 130. Protestantism, in general,^ is saved from this 

^ Comp. §^ 46 and 47 above. 

*^ I am aware that a small portion of Protestants teach infant regen- 
eration through baptism. They must logically teach its necessity to 
salvation and have thus let the nose of a very large camel into the 
tent. But, in the general repudiation of their position by others, we 
may leave them without further reference. 



253 The Rornaii System. 

dilemma by its rejection of the idea which involves 
Catholicism in difficulty. It denies that baptism is 
necessary to salvation. Baptism has a place in the 
remission of sins, for Peter preached upon the day of 
Pentecost : '' Repent and be baptized unto the remis- 
sion of your sins." But this is the connection of order, 
of outward confession, of the divine sealing testi- 
mony, not a relation of absolute necessity. True, in 
the text already quoted, regeneration is said to be of 
^' water and the Spirit,^' but in the immediate context 
it is twice described only as a birth by the Spirit. 
We read, '' He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved,^^ and, '' He that beHeveth not shall be 
damned ;" ^ but never, '' He that is not baptized shall 
be damned.^^ Nor are the dogmatic grounds upon 
which the doctrine is built more satisfactory. Prot- 
estants agree in general with Rome in practicing 
infant baptism, but they do it as an expression of the 
need of regenerating grace, as a prayer that that 
grace may be given, as an expression of their hope 
that it will be, and as a solemn dedication to God. 
They do not repeat it. But they regard as essential 
to its validity the after training which a child can re- 
ceive only from Christian parents or sponsors, and to 
them the baptism of heretics and infidels who will 
not train up a child in Christian principles and prac- 
tices, would seem to have little meaning, and hence 
little validity. 

It is not the purpose of this work to charge upon 
Roman theology all the vagaries of Roman practice. 
But when we see the absurdities into which the 

1 Mark xvi., i6. 



Confirmation, 253 

Roman theory has led enlightened men Hke the 
Jesuit missionaries in North America, some of whom 
baptized the infants of Huron Indians, without their 
knowledge and under the pretense of giving them 
medicine in sickness, we behold what is a veritable 
rediictio ad absiirdum of the whole doctrine. 

§ 131. As to the so-called sacrament of confirma- 
tion, it is necessary to say but little. The Roman 
Catechism defines the " form " as this : " I sign thee 
with the sign of the cross and confirm thee with the 
chrism of salvation in the name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Spirit." ^ The matter is the 
oil mixed with balsam. 

The question between Protestants and Catholics 
here is simply whether there is any warrant for the 
sacramental character which the latter have assigned. 
The arguments for this are given by Cardinal 
Gibbons as well as by any one. He urges the 
examples in the book of The Acts (viii. 14-17, and 
xix. 5, 6) of a laying on of hands in connection with 
the gifts of the Holy Ghost. But these gifts were 
miraculous, as is evident from the second of these 
passages : " The Holy Ghost came on them ; and 
they spake zvith tongues, and prophesied^ A strong 
passage, for its implications, would be 2 Cor. i. 21, 
were there any proof of the existence of the sacra- 
ment otherwise ; but with the dubious proof which 
can be derived from history, and with the uncertainty 
which must attend a sacrament having no more 
clearly defined a character than this — it merely con- 
firms what was once done in baptism — we must de- 

^ Cat. Rom., ii., iii., ii. 



254 ^^^ Roman System, 

cline to see in the citation any element of proof. 
If Peter ever *' confirmed," then upon one occasion 
the essential gift of confirmation, viz., the Holy Spirit, 
was given before baptism^ in the case of Cornelius — 
which seems a great neglect of proper order upon 
the part of the head of the Church. 

Protestants may be content to let the matter rest 
here. If Rome makes out her case for the other 
sacraments, they may readily concede her this one 
also. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PENANCE. 

§ 132. The sacrament of baptism introduces man, 
according to the Roman system, to the forgiving 
grace of God, assuring him, with an objective cer- 
tainty, of the forgiveness of his sins. If he remained 
in that condition without falHng into mortal sin, 
there would be no further need of a sacrament of 
forgiveness. But this is not the case. Fallen again 
into sin, the sinner needs another means of connec- 
tion with the forgiving grace of God, a means of 
restoration which shall be applicable and effective 
whenever sin shall interpose an obstacle between his 
soul and God. To meet this necessity the sacrament 
of penance was estabHshed. 

Penance is therefore defined as the sacrament 
*' by which the benefit of the death of Christ is ap- 
plied to those who have fallen after baptism.'^ ^ Pen- 
itence was, of course, always demanded of men as 
the condition of reconciHation with God, but before 
Christ there was no sacrament of penance, nor after 
Christ is there any sacramental penitence before bap- 
tism. It was specially instituted by Christ when " he 
breathed upon his disciples, saying : ' Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost ; whose sins ye shall forgive, they are 
forgiven them ; and whose sins ye shall retain, they are 

^ Council of Trent, in Schaff, vol. ii., p. 140 ff. 

255 



256 The Roman System. 

retained' (John xx. 23). By which action so signal 
and words so clear, the consent of all the fathers 
has ever understood that the power of forgiving and 
retaining sins was communicated to the apostles and 
their lawful successors, for the reconciling of the 
faithful who have fallen after baptism." Like the 
other sacraments, this sacrament has its form and 
matter, the form being the words, spoken by the 
priest, '' I absolve thee;'' the matter, "the acts of the 
penitent himself, contrition, confession, and satisfac- 
tion." The thing signified is " reconciliation with 
God, which sometimes, in persons who are pious and 
who receive this sacrament with devotion, is wont to 
be followed by peace and serenity of conscience, with 
exceeding consolation of spirit." 

Of the three parts of penance the first, contrition, 
is defined as '' a sorrow of mind, and a detestation 
for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for 
the future." ^ Perfect contrition, including a desire 
for the sacrament of penance, may " reconcile man 
with God before the sacrament is actually received," 
since it is the principal thing. Attrition, or imperfect 
contrition, arising from " the consideration of the 
turpitude of sin, or from the fear of hell and of pun- 
ishment," if it '' exclude the wish to sin " may " dis- 
pose the sinner to obtain the grace of God in the 
sacrament of penance." But the Council of Trent 
especially denies that " the sacrament of penance 
confers grace without any good motion on the part 
of those who receive it ; a thing which the Church 
of God never taught nor thought." 

1 Ibid,, p. 144 ff. 



Ideal of Penance. 257 

Confession is defined as the oral enumeration be- 
fore a priest, after a diligent examination of himself, 
of all the mortal sins of which a penitent may be 
conscious, even of those against the last two precepts 
of the law, which are sins of thought alone. Venial 
sins do not need to be confessed. Mortal sins unre- 
membered after diligent searching of all the folds 
and recesses of the conscience are understood to be 
included in the confession made; but mortal sins 
remembered and unconfessed will be unforgiven. 
The ministry of penance is confined to priests and 
bishops, who may perform it validly though them- 
selves in mortal sin. The office of the priest is 
judicial. 

Satisfactions are thus defined : They are punish- 
ments for sins inflicted upon the penitent by the 
w^ord of the priest to recall him from sin, to excite 
him to greater carefulness, and to remedy the remains 
of sin by acts of the contrary virtues.^ 

§ 133. Ideal. The institution of confession pre- 
sents itself somewhat differently to the pious priest 
and to the penitent. To the former it is the Church's 
great means of performing her office of restoring the 
individual soul. To quote from Cardinal Gibbons : 
'' My experience is that the confessional is the most 
powerful lever ever erected by a merciful God for 
raising men from the mire of sin. It has more weight 
in withdrawing people from vice than even the pulpit. 
In public sermons we scatter the seed of the word 
of God : in the confessional we reap the harvest. In 
sermons, to use a militaiy phrase, the fire is at ran- 

1 Substantially as in the Council of Trent, ibidem, p. 155 ff. 
17 



258 772^ Ro77ta7t System. 

dom, but in confession it is a dead shot. The words 
of the priest go home to the heart of the penitent. 
In a pubhc discourse the priest addresses all in gen- 
eral, and his words of admonition may be applicable 
to very few of his hearers. But his w^ords spoken 
in the confessional are directed exclusively to the 
penitent, whose heart is open to receive the word of 
God. The confessor exhorts the penitent according 
to his spiritual wants. He cautions him against the 
frequentation of dangerous company, or other occa- 
sions of sin ; or he recommends special practices of 
piety suited to the penitent's wants." ^ No one can 
fail to see in considerations like these the powerful 
hold which the system must have upon earnest- 
minded men who have been trained in it both as 
penitents and confessors. 

But to the penitent who is not a priest, the insti- 
tution derives power from its conformity with that 
whole conception of the external Church as the 
ground of objective certainty upon which the Roman 
system rests. Mohler cannot conceive of a true 
inward repentance without the outward confession.^ 
The inward spiritual act is completed and perfected 
by the outward. Then comes the satisfaction, which 
confirms and develops the contrition. It has a re- 
troactive effect, since it consists in the restoration 
and reparation of the wrong as far as this is possible, 
and also a subsequent effect, since it is a means of 
cure, a remedy, and a preventive of sin. The soul 
itself derives comfort from deeds of satisfaction, since 
it cannot think a sin forgiven when it is unrepaired. 

1 F. F., p. 419. 2 Symbolik^ p. 283^. 



The Confessional. 259 

And then, when the penitent, confession made and 
reparation provided for, hears the words of the priest, 
*' I absolve thee," he feels, with all the certainty with 
which he knows that he has heard these words, that 
God, acting through his minister upon earth, has 
truly forgiven the sin confessed. 

§ 134. Proof. This is perhaps as w^ell conducted 
by Cardinal Gibbons, though compendiously, as by 
any one. After pointing out the fact that the prin- 
cipal object of the mission of the Saviour was to re- 
lease the soul from the bonds of sin, he asks the 
question : '' How was man to obtain forgiveness in the 
Church after our Lord's ascension ?" Christ could 
not present himself visibly to every sinner and say to 
him individually, " Thy sins be forgiven thee ; " and 
therefore he was compelled to appoint ministers of 
reconciliation in his name. It is to this ministry, 
viz., to the ministry of the sacrament of penance, that 
the cardinal applies the text, " God hath reconciled 
us to himself through Christ, and hath given to us 
tlie ministry of reconciliation'' (2 Cor. v. 18-20). But 
is there direct gospel authority for the conferment of 
this power ? The cardinal replies. Yes. He quotes 
the Petrine text, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, '' Whatsoever thou 
[Peter] shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in 
heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed also in heaven," calls attention to the 
same words as uttered '' to all the apostles assembled 
together on another occasion" (Matt, xviii. 18), and 
cites, lastly, the only text employed by the Council 
of Trent, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins 
ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose 



26o The Roman System, 

sins ye shall retain, they are retained " (John xx. 

§ 135. We may properly pause at this point in the 
argument to consider more fully what has thus far 
been urged. This is the vital center of the whole 
subject. The custom of oral confession depends 
for its meaning and authority upon the authority of 
the priest to receive such confession, and this upon 
his judicial power to prescribe satisfactions and im- 
part absolution. With the judicial power of the 
priest everything stands or falls. Now, this judicial 
power we deny. The few texts quoted in favor of it 
must be interpreted in such a way as to agree with 
the rest of the New Testament, for, aside from any 
dogmatic grounds for such a demand, common sense 
makes it sufficiently plain that an element so funda- 
mental to the Roman system, if that system is indeed 
the system of the New Testament, could never have 
been obscured or contradicted in the remaining por- 
tions of the sacred writings. But the only condition 
mentioned in the New Testament upon which for- 
giveness is to be obtained is repentance. Not even 
baptism is such a condition, for although this sacra- 
ment is associated with repentance in passages like 
Acts ii. 38, or John iii. 5, the texts prescribing repent- 
ance alone, and offering salvation upon that condi- 
tion only, are too numerous not to represent the true 
meaning of Scripture. Baptism, though it occupies 

1 The straits into which the argument for confession from the Scrip- 
tures is brought is illustrated by the fact that the Roma7i Catechism 
quotes, in favor of its institution by Christ, John xi. 44: " Loose him 
and let him go," and Luke xvii. 14. 



The Confessional not Biblical, 261 

some place, must occupy a subordinate place in this 
matter. But auricular confession to a priest is not 
once mentioned, is not once hinted at^ in the New Tes- 
tament as a condition of the forgiveness of sins. Such 
a sentence as that of the Council of Trent, that 
auricular confession to a priest "is of divine right 
necessary for all who have fallen after baptism," is 
not only not in Scripture, but is against every impli- 
cation of Scripture. The whole gospel was summed 
up in the word of Paul to the jailer at Philippi, " Be- 
lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ [the same as repent, 
substantially], and thou shalt be saved." 

When we consider the proof texts more closely, 
whatever appearance they may at first have of favor- 
ing the Roman system will be speedily removed. If 
we accept, for sake of argument, the Roman interpre- 
tation of the first part of the text. Matt. xvi. 18, 19, 
that it ascribes the primacy in the Church to Peter, 
then the whole text will seem to pertain, as that por- 
tion of it indisputably will, to intransferable attri- 
butes of the head of the Church. Certainly, as far as 
all appearance is concerned, the power of the keys is 
communicated to Peter by this text in the same sense 
as the primacy. But the case is not helped by bringing 
in the text Matt, xviii. 18. The cardinal restricts the 
application of this verse to the twelve apostles, but 
this is contrary to every implication of the context. 
It is true that the twelve were specially called to the 
Saviour, and made the immediate objects of a special 
lesson about humility (comp. Mark ix. 35), but the 
general drift of the following discourse marks it out 
as indisputably intended for the whole body of the 



262 The Roman System. 

disciples. " If thy brother sin against thee, go, show 
him his fault between thee and him alone " — Is that 
intended for the instruction of the apostles only ? 
*' If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any- 
thing that they shall ask " — Is that for apostles 
alone ? Or is this — '' Where two or three are gath- 
ered in my name, there am I in the midst of them ?" 
And, to take the case apparently most favorable to 
the cardinal, is this text, though it mentions Peter 
by name, and though he asks a question which is in 
form applicable personally to himself, intended for 
Peter, or for the apostles, and not for every Christian 
everywhere and in all time ? — this namely, '' Then 
came Peter, and said to him, Lord, how oft shall 
my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? until 
seven times ? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto 
thee. Until seven times, but, Until seventy times 
seven ?" The entire context here makes what is said 
to apply to the whole Church, as is involved neces- 
sarily in verse 17, and it is accordingly, in spite of 
the denial of the Council of Trent,^ the whole Church 
to which in this second passage the power of binding 
and loosing is given. This fact, and the circumstance 
that the power of binding and loosing is here imme- 
diately connected with the disciplinary power of the 
Church, with its power to make a man ^' as the gen- 
tile and the pubHcan," give the final and inexpugna- 
ble interpretation, that the power of the keys is the 
power of authoritative discipline in the Church, 
whereby what the Church does in the way of right- 
eously correcting sin shall be recognized as valid by 

^ See Schaff, p. 152. 



The Confessional not Biblical, 263 

God himself. And this authority belongs as truly to 
every congregational church as to any bishop, even 
him of Rome. 

§ 136. It is from such preparatory study that we 
must cofne to the interpretation of John xx. 23, the 
only text quoted by the Council of Trent for their 
doctrine. It stands sohtary and alone in the Johan- 
nean text, and hence those limitations and definitions 
which are derived from the context for other texts 
must here be taken from the general scope of Scrip- 
ture. On the face of it, the text will bear the Roman 
interpretation. But we are not to restrict the word 
d(piTj[xCj forgive, to the final and divine remission of 
sins. It may have a much looser meaning. It may 
mean nothing more than '' let pass." And here it 
will mean, in accordance with the drift of other 
Scripture, to relieve from disciplinary notice or pun- 
ishment. The word '' retain " will have the corre- 
sponding meaning, to assign or inflict such punish- 
ment. Here, again, the apostles are not specially 
endowed with a grace for the Church in distinction 
from the Church, but as representatives of the 
Church, and at the time constituting the Church, 
they receive what is conferred through them upon 
the whole Church. Such is the general position of 
the New Testament on these themes, and such its 
departure from the interpretation which Rome would 
force upon it. 

§ 137. But there are also objections to the Roman 
argument in the nature of the case. The underly- 
ing thought of the whole argument is the necessity 
of the objective and external to the subjective and 



264. The Roman System. 

spiritual, of a channel for the outward transmission 
of an inward and spiritual grace. This is the prime 
fallacy of the Roman system, which has repeatedly 
engaged our attention. But again, the judicial func- 
tion of the priest, when accurately examined, destroys 
itself Strictly taken, it requires omniscience upon the 
part of the priest. How can he apportion the proper 
satisfactions and pronounce finally a vaHd absolution 
unless he perfectly knows all the circumstances and 
all the heart and purpose of the penitent? Of 
course, this is impossible ; and the system makes a 
provision against such a demand by admitting that 
the priest goes upon the confession as it is made, 
that absolution gained by dishonest confession will 
be no complete absolution, but that sins unwittingly 
left unconfessed shall be forgiven as if they were 
confessed. But here is the element that destroys all 
the rest. These unconfessed sins that are neverthe- 
less forgiven, are forgiven without confession, and 
hence confession is not essentially necessary to for- 
giveness. They are also forgiven without the exer- 
cise of the judicial power of the clergy, and hence 
that power is not essentially necessary. To all this 
class of sins, the Catholic stands upon the same 
ground as the Protestant. Besides, perfect contrition 
brings forgiveness without the sacrament (§ 132). 
But now, if the sacrament of penance is not indis- 
pensably necessary for the forgiveness of some spe- 
cific class of sins, it is not so for any sins. If ex- 
ceptions are allowed, the whole system is reduced 
from the rank of a provision dogmatically necessary 
to a disciplinary arrangement of the Church, like 



History Against tfie Confessional, 265 

celibacy. Here, again, we see the inner inconsistency 
and ambiguity of the system. Auricular confession 
of a sin is necessary to its forgiveness. But certain 
sins may be left unconfessed and yet receive for- 
giveness, if only they have been forgotten by the 
penitent. Does God forget them ? If not, then he 
forgives sin, some sin, without confession to a priest. 
Why then not all ? 

§ 138. Cardinal Gibbons reenforces his biblical 
argument with an historical one. '' All the fathers 
of the Church, from the first to the last," he tells us, 
'' insist upon the necessity of sacramental confession 
as a divine institution."^ He himself cites, with 
whatever degree of success, Basil, Ambrose, Augus- 
tine, Chrysostom, and Jerome. These writers may 
be rightly quoted in favor of a rudimentary system 
of penance, for in Basil we stand at the fountain 
head of the development of confession.^ But why, 
if this is indeed an original Christian institution, does 
the cardinal not quote something in its favor from 
the earliest representatives of the Christian literature ? 
Why begin with Basil, who was born about a. d. 
330? Perrone begins his citations with Cyprian 
(died 258). Why did he not mention Ignatius? If 
the Roman Church is right, auricular confession has 
been practiced from the beginning in accordance with 
the institution of Christ. Where are the proofs that 
it was thus observed ? 

Receiving no answer to this question from leading 

1 F. F., p. 393. 

2 The quotation is from his " Rule," the foundation of the monas- 
tic system, where auricular confession grew up. 



266 The Ro7nan System. 

Catholic authorities, we may undertake investigation 
upon our own account, and we shall, find, if we begin 
with the New Testament, that there is in that vol- 
ume not a single instance of auricular confession to 
be found. The baptism of John was connected with 
confession (Matt. iii. 6 ; Mark i. 5), but it was public 
confession, for they confessed as they were baptized. 
The very word confess (i^o/wAoyico) probably means 
to confess publicly. Though it is not indubitably 
certain, it is extremely probable that the Ephesians 
who '' came confessing " (Acts xix. 18), did this pub- 
licly, since others are said to have publicly burned 
their books. And, finally, the only explicit direction 
to confess sins found in the New Testament (James 
v. 16), ''Confess your faults one to another," must 
be counted directly against auricular confession un- 
less we are to suppose that the epistle was written 
to priests alone ! 

Nor is the effort to find traces of the present 
Roman custom in other early Christian literature 
more successful. In the newly discovered '' Teach- 
ing of the Twelve Apostles," supposed to date about 
A. D. 100, confession of sins is twice commanded,^ but 
in neither case is it auricular confession but public 
(i^o/io?.oyi(o), and in the first instance it is expressly 
said '' In the clinrcli thou shalt acknowledge thy trans- 
gressions," where church means not the building, but 
the- assembly (ixxlr^aia). In Clement of Rome 
(dated from a. d. 90 to 100) v^e read commendation 
of acknowledging transgressions (i Cor. li.), but 
nothing is said of the priest, and in the following 

1 Chap, iv., vs. 14, and chap, xiv,, vs. i. 



Growth of the Confessional, 267 

chapter the writer goes on to say: '*The Lord, 
brethren, stands in need of nothing ; and he desires 
nothing of any one except that confession be made 
to Him!'' Barnabas (about 120), who speaks of con- 
fession only in a passage derived from the " Teach- 
ing " (xix. 12), has nothing to say or hint of auricular 
confession, Ignatius nothing, nothing Justin, nothing 
Clement of Alexandria. The recently discovered 
apologist Aristides (a. d. 125) speaks of the shame 
of the newly converted heathen, and of his ^' confes- 
sion to God',' but says nothing of confession to a 
priest (chap. xvii.). That word '' confess," which was 
early used of frequent pubhc confession in the church, 
began about Tertullian's time to be used of the pub- 
he and common confession of the congregation in 
the period of fasting before Easter. It was natural 
that private confession should be made, as was com- 
manded by the text in James, and it was no more 
than natural that the respect in which the clergy 
were held should early lead to their being employed 
in this way, originally, of course, for an office of 
friendship, the penitent seeking advice and help, not 
forgiveness, which God alone can impart. Similar 
recourse is now made, and has always been made, to 
Protestant pastors. But it is true that in the increas- 
ing legality of the Church, and in its increasing 
tendency toward an external and work-righteousness 
— in fact, during the development of just that false 
view of the Church which now forms the foundation 
stone of the Roman system — this practice, like other 
practices, passed through the formalizing process. 
By A. D. 121 5 the Lateran Council could command 



^68 The Roman System, 

at least one annual confession before the penitent's 
own priest. But Christian antiquity does not speak 
for the practice, and this branch of the argument, 
again, is a failure. 

§ 139. Attrition. The distinction between con- 
trition and attrition involves a painful lowering of 
the standards of the gospel. Many of the expres- 
sions of Roman works upon contrition are above 
criticism, but the way is always left open, by means 
of the emphasis laid upon attrition, for the acceptance 
by the confessor of a spiritual condition as the basis 
of absolution which is not adequate to meet the lofty 
demands of the gospel of Christ. The Roman Cate- 
cliism, for example, is particularly full and good upon 
the subject of contrition. '' That is inward peni- 
tence," we read, '' when we turn to God from the heart 
and detest the sins committed by us, and hate them ; 
and when we deliberately determine to amend the evil 
course of our life and our bad ways, not without 
hope of obtaining pardon by the mercy of God. 
Upon this follows as an attendant, however, grief and 
sorrow, which is a disturbance and an affection, and 
is called by many a passion, and is joined with detes- 
tation of sins." ^ This is good, and only fails because 
of that lack of a true psychological analysis, the 
results of which we have noted elsewhere, which 
prevents the relations of the different activities of the 
soul in repentance from being understood. Thus 
faith is declared to be no part of penitence, because 
it must precede, being here understood not as the 
act of the will committing itself to God, but a fore- 

' Pars a,, cap. v., qucBstio iv. 



Contrition and Attrition. 269 

going intellectual belief of certain appertaining 
truths, such as God's existence. But, certainly evan- 
gelical faith, or turning toward God, is but another 
phase of repentance, or turning away from sin, and 
is inseparable from it. Attrition is, however, some- 
thing still lower. Contrition "is that sorrow for 
sin which has for its motive the love of God," says 
the Catholic Dictionary^ while attrition arises from a 
lower motive, such as fear of hell, the loss of 
heaven, the turpitude of sin, here following closely 
the Council of Trent. The Dictio7iary goes on 
to say that we may " exclude from our definition the 
sorrow which makes a man renounce sin because he 
is afraid of hell, while at the same time he would be 
ready to offend God, if he could do so without incur- 
ring the penalty." Thus, mere self-regarding pru- 
dence is excluded from possible forms of the condi- 
tion of absolution. Now, to be sure, even this lower 
form of repentance, attrition, is thought to be a super- 
natural feeling — that is, one elicited by God's grace 
— and with the sacrament of confession, enough for 
pardon, since otherwise the sacrament would seem to 
confer little or nothing upon the penitent, for forgive- 
ness follows upon perfect contrition without the sac- 
rament. But, stripped of all verbiage, what is such 
a doctrine but this, that a man may be forgiven 
through the sacrament — that is, reconciled to God — 
while inwardly estranged from him ? and thus exter- 
nally reconciled while internally not ? Is it not to 
accept a spiritual state that is not gracious as if it 
were ? Does it not forget that the sole exhortation 

1 Article "Attrition." 



270 The Roman Syste7n. 

of the gospel is that which is condensed in the phrase, 
" My son, give me thine heart'' ?^ 

§ 140. It is easy to see why the Roman system is 
driven to this unsatisfactory position. Its artificiahty 
at other points compels it to be artificial here. It 
supposes that a child is put in a state of grace by bap- 
tism, apart from all considerations of its own spiritual 
activities. In process of time the child is confirmed 
upon the supposition that it is in a state of grace, with- 
out sufficient investigation whether it exhibits in 
actual fact the signs of a true religious life. Now, 
such a child grown to maturity comes to confession. 
It is, theoretically, in a state of grace, but it shows no 
signs of real sorrow for sin or a real love to God. It 
seems to be without grace in fact. What shall be 
done? Plainly the theory must be followed still. 
It must be supposed to have grace, and the sacra- 
ment of penance must be supposed to make up all 
that is deficient, or else the whole edifice up to this 
point collapses. Hence the priest is compelled to 
accept for grace that which is no grace, or else the 
whole Roman system must be surrendered. Thus 
the sacrament of penance leads to a great depoten- 
tiation of the gospel. That gospel no more views a 
man reconciled with God when estranged in heart 
upon this earth than it does in heaven. And what 
would heaven be, if men could be admitted there 
while in heart not loving God ? An artificial system 
makes an artificial forgiveness ; and an artificial for- 
giveness would make an artificial heaven. 

^ Even the Cath. Diet, says : " Sin which separates the soul from 
God is only annulled by love which unites it to him." 



Satisfactions. 271 

§ 141. Satisfactions. To this department of the 
doctrine of penance Protestants have, again, the 
greatest objections. Not everything about it is, 
however, equally objectionable. Sins are viewed by 
Catholics as having two classes of punishment, eter- 
nal and temporal. When sin is forgiven, the eternal 
punishment is removed. But there remain various 
temporal penalties, and it is the office of the priest 
to prescribe these, as penances, which are to be per- 
formed by the penitent that thereby satisfaction 
may be made to God. 

The first objection which will occur to the Prot- 
estant is that the one great satisfaction, made by 
Jesus Christ, is infringed upon by this idea; but, 
although the final verdict after mature consideration 
will be that the objection is well founded, it is only 
fair to say that the Catholic does not view satisfac- 
tion exactly in the way implied, and Catholic the- 
ology has sought in various ways to avoid the diffi- 
culty here raised. The one superabundant and 
supererogatory satisfaction for our sins, rendering 
the fullest conceivable equivalent to God therefor, 
is the satisfaction of Christ, and it provides for the 
remission of every penalty against us, temporal as 
well as spiritual. Even the temporal satisfactions 
which Christians are held to perform are said by the 
Council of Trent not to be '' so our own as not to be 
through Jesus Christ, for we who can do nothing of 
ourselves, as of ourselves, can do all things, he co- 
operating who strengthens us. Thus man has not 
wherein to glory, but all our glorying is in Christ, 
in whom we live, in whom we nierity in whom we 



272 The Roman System, 

satisfy y ^ The temporal satisfactions are disciplin- 
ary in their nature to a large extent, although not 
wholly, and thus designed to ** recall from sin, and 
check as it were with a bridle, and make penitents 
more cautious and watchful for the future." ^ These 
qualifications certainly break the point of the criti- 
cism to some extent. 

But a closer examination of the ideas involved 
will leave the difficulty still remaining. What is for- 
giveness ? The reception of the sinner into the 
favor of God. What is the office of punishment in 
distinction from chastisement ? The satisfaction of 
the justice of God. For the forgiven sinner there 
can, therefore, be no more punishment, since he who 
has the favor of God is not exposed to the justice of 
God. " There is, therefore, no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus " (Rom. viii. i). True, certain 
consequences of sin are never removed by forgive- 
ness. If a man in a fit of drunkenness loses his arm, 
he may be forgiven of the sin of drunkenness, but 
his arm will not be restored. So there is a large 
variety of consequences of sin which are never re- 
mitted. But what connection have these conse- 
quences with the penances of the confessional ? 
Can the act of the priest mxake any difference with 
them ? Can he, in fact, know anything sufficient 
about them ? And can his prescriptions of satisfac- 
tions be thought to reflect in any way the mind of 
God ? The Catholic will say '' Yes," but the Protestant 
will ask whether the priest has a revelation of the 
will of God in respect to the proper penance in every 

1 Schaff, p. 157. 2 ji^id,^ p. 156, 



Prayer as Penance. 273 

case ; and when the Catholic repHes " No," he will say, 
" Then the connection between God's chastisements 
and the penances of the confessional is still unex- 
plained." And it remains still unexplained when we 
see what the penances actually are. Suppose that 
that unfortunate drunkard who had lost his arm 
should have as a penance prescribed to him the 
repetition of a certain number of prayers in a cold 
church by night clad in light garments : the divorce 
between the chastisement of God and man would be 
as complete as the difference between the loss of an 
arm and the sensation of cold. 

No ! The bibhcal atmosphere is not that of the 
confessional. Nothing is said whatever in that sacred 
volume about the mediation of a priest, but every- 
where the fullest conceivable pardon is promised 
upon repentance and faith. " Let us reason together :" 
says God in Isaiah, '^ though your sins be as scarlet, 
they shall be as white as snow;"^ and the refrain is 
taken up in the New Testament in the words, " able 
to save them to the uttermost that come unto God 
by him," ^ — " the blood of Jesus Christ his Son clean- 
seth us from all sin." ^ The whole apparatus of the 
Roman confessional is as foreign to the New Testa- 
ment as a Russian imperial coronation is to the sim- 
plicity of the American Republic. 

§ 142. The use which is so largely made of 
prayer in the modern Catholic Church as penance 
seems to demand a moment's consideration. The 
penance is a punishment. But is prayer a punish- 
ment ? Is it not, rather, the Christian's highest privi- 

1 Chap, i., vs. 18. 2 Heb. vii. 25. ^ i John i. 7, 

18 



274 '^^^ Roman System. 

lege ? It is communion with God, and this is the 
essence of the " eternal life " which our Lord came 
to bestow upon believers (John xvii. 3). '' Yes," the 
Catholic may reply, '' but that is the goodness of 
mother Church, that she prescribes as her mild 
punishments the very privileges of the Christian." 
But do they remain punishments ? Have they the 
nature of sufferings ? Are they anything like the 
*' fifes " of purgatory ? In spite of all the penitential 
prayers which a Catholic may offer, will he not be in 
fear, if he understands the system, that, after all, he 
is not paying penalty by his privilege of prayer, but 
only deferring to purgatory what must be paid. there 
under the holy justice of God? 

Or, if by an approximation to the Protestant posi- 
tion, prayer has an efficacy in procuring the pardon 
of sins and so will gain from God the Judge the re- 
mission of the temporal penalty of sin, why should 
it be prescribed in the form in which it is ? Why 
should a man be directed to say one hundred pater- 
nosters, or three hundred Hail Mary's ? Are Chris- 
tians to be " like the heathen " and to indulge in 
" vain repetitions " ? And will they be heard for 
their *' much speaking " (Matt. vi. 7, 8) ? Roman 
practice seems to have grown strangely oblivious 
of the fact that this plain direction of our Lord him- 
self: '' Be not like unto them : for your Father know- 
eth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him," 
immediately precedes, in the gospel narrative, that 
very Lord's Prayer which it has made the object of 
innumerable repetitions, and that too as a punish- 
ment for sin ! 



Purgatory, 275 

§ 143. Purgatory. The fully developed doctrine 
of satisfactions has led to another feature of Catholi- 
cism to which Protestants strenuously object, but 
which is required by the logical sequence of the 
Roman system, that of purgatory. Confessions are 
imperfect, and there will remain upon each soul a 
greater or less degree of guilt ^ requiring satisfaction 
after all has been done which can be done in this 
world, and hence a place of further satisfaction and 
of purification thereby is required in the future world. 
This place is furnished by purgatory. Accordingly, 
the Roman Catechism defines as follows : "' There is 
a purgatorial fire, where the souls of the pious, tor- 
mented (cruciatce) for a definite time, are thereby 
purified so that entrance may be opened to them 
into the eternal fatherland into which nothing con- 
taminated enters."^ 

The implication, at least, and often the express 
teaching of CathoHc theologians is that every soul 
has some purifying punishment to undergo, some re- 
maining satisfaction to ofifer.^ We may pause to 
remark that this leaves the system in an unfortunate 
light, and diminishes greatly the certainty and secur- 
ity which Rome claims to give her votaries. Let a 
given soul make an absolutely full confession, men- 
tioning every sin of which it is conscious, whether 
mortal or venial.. The priest prescribes the suitable 
penances, and on condition that they be performed, 

1 The Catholic Dictionary mentions venial sins as a chief object 
of the erection of purgatorial punishments (article " Purgatory"). 

2 Op. clt., i., vi., iii. 

3 So the Catholic Dictionary , and so, in his elucidation, Hase. 



276 The Ro77ian System. 

goes on to give absolution. Is that absolution iden- 
tical with the divine forgiveness ? According to the 
claims of Rome, Yes. Then the soul is entirely for- 
given, since forgotten sins are regarded as included 
in the confession and are embraced in the absolution. 
Yet, nevertheless, that soul, which has made the 
fullest confession and been entirely absolved by the 
tribunal of God upon earth, has still sins to satisfy 
for in purgatory ! Where is Rome's proffered cer- 
tainty of salvation ? Where is the so much vaunted 
perfection of her priestly powers ? 

§ 144. The supposition of a purgatory is not with- 
out support in arguments which tend at the same 
time to idealize it. Thus Mohler ^ views it as a place 
where souls are brought into relations which '' cor- 
respond to their still imperfect religio-ethical spiritual 
life and where they can perfect the same." He also 
declares that the '' fire " is merely a figure of speech 
for positive punishment, although in this respect not 
having the consent of all the great teachers of the 
Church, like Bellarmine, for example.^ Protestant 
theologians in our own day have laid emphasis upon 
the fact that souls pass out of this life in an exceed- 
ingly imperfect condition and are at death in no way 
perfectly prepared for the privileges and occupations 
of heaven. But the emphasis in the Roman system 
is laid upon the penal nature of purgatorial suffer- 
ings, upon the satisfactions there to be rendered ; and 
the idea of satisfactions for sins militates against the 
fullness of the forgiveness in Christ, as already drawn 

^ Symbollk., p. 218 ff. 

^ The Catholic Dictionary leans to literal fire. 



Purgatory Unnecessary. 2"]^ 

out at length. Taking the defense of purgatory 
upon the ideal ground of Mohler, Protestant thought, 
when cleared of all obscurity, is positive in its affir- 
mation of the entire superfluity of any such place of 
purification. It is most consonant with Scripture 
representations to believe that " the souls of behevers 
are at their death made perfect in holiness," as 
the Westminster Confession long since taught. But 
what is holiness ? It is a condition of the will. And, 
if the will is made perfectly what it should be, that, 
like every other change in this faculty, will and must 
be an instantaneous one. The tone of Scripture is 
also entirely in favor of the idea that the temptations 
to evil with which this world abounds will be un- 
known beyond the grave. The permanence of the 
change in the will, therefore, will be unthreatened 
by external or internal attacks. True, the sensibili- 
ties will not be brought into instantaneous conform- 
ity with the perfected will, for any change in the 
sensibility of man must be a gradual one. Yet in a 
world where the soHcitations of the " flesh " are felt 
no more, and where the '' world " can bring no ad- 
verse influence to bear, it would seem as if the change 
in the sensibility ought to be exceedingly rapid, as, 
in fact, it often is in this world upon special occasions, 
like the conversion of a mature man. How often the 
new convert finds all his desires and appetites turned 
into completely new channels ! The intellectual hori- 
zon will also need great enlargement, and this will 
demand time, though it would seem as if this en- 
largement ought to be very rapid in such a world, 
where there is communion with Christ, and where 



278 The Roman System. 

even a beggar may rest ''in Abraham's bosom." 
But there will be no need of torments to effect such 
changes. In fact, the atmosphere of love and privi- 
lege is the atmosphere in which soul growth is most 
rapid. Paradise and the opportunities of progress 
afforded by the infinite eternity will develop and per- 
fect the emotive and intellectual faculties ; but we can 
perceive no need of torments for this end. 

§ 145. When we come to the Scriptural argument 
for purgatory, we find it altogether insufficient. 
Among the texts quoted is 2 Mace. xii. 40 ff. Here 
we find mention of prayers for dead Jews who had 
died with the consecrated tokens of idols upon them, 
and of supplications, sacrifice, and propitiation, " that 
they might be released from their sins." This apoc- 
ryphal passage is directly contrary to the doctrine 
of the canonical Old Testament books which declare 
that " they that go down into the pit cannot hope for 
thy truth " (Is. xxxviii. 18; comp. Ps. Ixxxviii. 1 1, 12). 
But even if it were not thus inharmonious with the 
Hebrew canon, the passage testifies only to the be- 
lief that the condition of the dead might be altered, 
not at all to the doctrine of a purifying fire in the 
under world. Another text is i Sam. xxxi. 13, which 
is supported by 2 Sam i. 12, etc.; iii. 33, etc. These 
passages speak of the mourning made for Saul and 
Abner, in connection with which there was "fast- 
ing," but no mention is made of prayer for the de- 
parted souls, much less of any purgatory. From 
the Catholic Dictionary we might take a long list of 
texts which are said to '' point " to the existence of 
purgatory, but we forbear, inasmuch as that diction- 



The New Testameiit Against Purgatory, 279 

ary itself, with great and rare candor, remarks, " We 
would appeal to those general principles of Scripture 
rather than to particular texts often alleged in proof of 
purgatory. We doubt if they contai7i an explicit and 
direct reference to it!' And in respect to one New 
Testament text frequently quoted, it will be enough 
refutation for a Protestant when he explains, with 
this dictionary, as follows: "St. Paul (i Cor. iii. 15) 
speaks of some who will be saved ' yet as through 
fire,' but he seems to mean the fire in which Christ 

is to appear at the last St. Paul, if we have 

caught his meaning, speaks of the end of the world, 
not of the time between death and judgment, and so, 
we think, does our Lord in Matt. xii. 32." It were 
better to say that the " fire " is a mere figure of speech 
to express difficult salvation, and has reference neither 
to purgatory nor any other purgation. The last- 
cited text is, however, generally employed by Cath- 
olic theologians in defense of purgatory — '' shall not 
be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the 
world to come!' 

Per contra, the New Testament is full of expres- 
sions which "point" to, and also teach, a doctrine 
altogether inconsistent with purgatory. "To-day 
shalt thou be with me in Paradise " (Luke xxiii. 43) — 
Paradise for the dying thief, who certainly must have 
been " unfit " for its joys ; " Thou art tormented, and 
. . . there is a great gulf fixed" (Luke xvi. 25, 26) 
gives no hint of anything temporary in the place of 
torment, nor any purifying tendency in its flames, 
which is also not made evident by the unrepentant 
hardness of all Dives' speech ; " He that believeth 



28o The Roman System. 

hath eternal life " (John vi. 47) ; '' Blessed diVO: the dead 
which die in the Lord . . . that they may rest from 
their labors'' (Rev. xiv. 13); and to quote from a 
book which Protestants do not acknowledge, but 
which will have the force of a refutation to a Church 
that has put it in its canon, we read in Wisdom iii. 
1-3, " But the souls of the righteous are in the hand 
of God, and no torment shall toitch them. . . . but 
they are in peaee!' 

§ 146. Cardinal Gibbons begins his historical proof 
of purgatory by a citation from Tertullian (died about 
220). The Protestant apologist must admit the early 
practice of praying for the dead, which is supported 
by his citation. Vague and confused ideas about all 
that belonged to the future state were universal in 
all religions surrounding the Christian Church, and 
it is not wonderful either that the earliest Christians 
did not have correct ideas, or that the course of de- 
generation which has resulted in the chief Roman 
doctrines began before any clearly formulated views 
as to the decisive character of this life had prepared 
an obstacle to it. And yet it is remarkable that the 
very earliest writers, who stand nearest the New 
Testament, cannot be quoted in favor of any shred 
of the doctrine of purgatory. The '' Teaching " is 
silent on it ; Clement of Rome also. Not even the 
Martyr Ignatius, as he journeys on toward his cer- 
tain death at Rome, drops a request for prayers for 
his soul after its departure, though he often requests 
prayers that he may be supported in his trials and 
maintained faithful to the end.^ Justin and Irenaeus, 

1 The only passage that looks like it is the obscure text (Trallians 



History of Purgatory. 281 

in all their numerous pages, do not refer to the prac- 
tice. But Clement of Alexandria^ refers to an in- 
ward spiritual fire, purifying us in this world, which 
Origen transfers to the other side, and makes an in- 
strument of purification which even Peter and Paul 
will require. Cyprian, the two Gregories, and Basil 
have traces of the same thought. The true develop- 
ment of the doctrine of purgatory was reserved for 
the West. Augustine spoke doubtfully of the possi- 
bility of temporary punishment in the next world, 
Caesarius of Aries more definitely, while Gregory the 
Great erected the notion into a doctrine and intro- 
duced the practice of masses for the dead. But it was 
only in the scholastic era, and because of the neces- 
sary implications of the doctrines connected with the 
sacrament of penance, that the full conception of a 
place of satisfaction was elaborated. In spite of the 
cardinal's remark that praying for the dead " is not an 
invention of modern times, but a doctrine universally 
enforced in the first and purest ages of the Church,'' 
we venture to affirm that the doctrine of purga- 
tory, with all that follows upon it, is a manifest case 
of what Cardinal Newman called doctrinal " corrup- 
tion." It lacks a '' germ " in the recorded instruc- 
tions of our Lord Jesus Christ ; it does not '^ assimi- 
late " with other Christian doctrines, particularly 

xiii.) : " Let my spirit be sanctified by yours, not only now, but also 
when I shall attain to God." It probably means. Let me have your 
prayers now and at the hour of death. Not even the " longer recen- 
sion," written much later, which modifies to "When I shall /^^z/^ at- 
tained to God," made the passage a reference to prayers after death. 

1 From this point I follow Hofmann in Herzog, Realencyc, vol. iv., 
p. 515- 



282 The Roman System, 

with the doctrine of the fullness of the divine forgive- 
ness ; its developed form is in entire antagonism 
with a sound exegesis. It cannot, therefore, allege 
for itself the verdict of the history of doctrine, or of 
the Catholic experience of the Christian Church. 

§ 147. But the corruptions accompanying it have 
added most strength to the deep and powerful oppo- 
sition which this doctrine more than almost any 
other has excited in Protestant minds. The scandals 
connected with prayers for the dead, the mechanical 
weighing of so many masses over against so much 
purgatorial suffering, the extortions which have been 
practiced, the fears which have been played upon to 
create a rich revenue for avaricious ecclesiastics, the 
superstition that has been promoted — these are the 
things which have excited Protestant abhorrence, and 
which testify to the evil affinities of the doctrine. They 
are too notorious to need proof or any lengthened 
enumeration. Even the staid Council of Trent was 
obliged to go out of the path of its doctrinal defini- 
tions to exhort : *' While those things which tend to 
a certain kind of curiosity or superstition, or which 
savor of filthy lucre, let them [the bishops] prohibit 
as scandals and stumbling-blocks of the faithful." ^ 
In our own day the rich are often led to endow a 
church on condition that a certain number of masses 
for their souls shall be said, and often the number 
mounts into the thousands. As but one mass can 
be said in a single church in a day, the road, so to 
speak, sometimes gets blocked. It becomes impossi- 
ble to have the masses said which have been bought. 

1 Schaff, p. 199. 



Corricptions and Inconsistencies, 283 

Masses gratis for the poor become impossible. And 
very great scandals, such as the farming out of 
masses to be said by poor priests in country par- 
ishes, have arisen and will always arise. I sim- 
ply allude to these things here. They are too 
well known to demand proof. A doctrine so cum- 
bered about with abuse must be, as it is, an abuse in 
itself^ 

§ 148. One more thought ere we leave this sub- 
ject. The Catholic Dictionary, quite consistent with 
other Roman authorities, and with the logical neces- 
sities of the idea, represents purgatory rather as a 
place of privilege, for if the soul be not '' fit " for the 
presence of God, certainly the purification it under- 
goes is to be regarded as an immeasurable favor. 
Says the Dictionary , '' All the souls in purgatory 
have died in the love of God and are certain to enter 
heaven. But as yet they are not pure and holy 
enough to see God, and Gods mercy allots them a 
place and a time for cleansing and preparation!' 
Why, then, should we labor to relieve them of what 
is a mercy? Why to shorten the time in which 
they are becoming fit to see God? The mani- 
fest inconsistency of presenting purgatory as a 
blessing to be desired, and a curse to be un- 
speakably avoided and eagerly removed should 
receive more consideration from Catholic apologists 
than it has. It is, however, only another of the in- 
numerable self-contradictions, small and great, into 
which this artificial system of doctrine has inextri- 

^ Littledale, Plain Reasons,^, in ff., has been careful to collect a 
great deal of illustrative material on this point. 



284 The Roman System. 

cably fallen. Nothing is consistent but the truth, 
nothing inconsistent but falsehood. 

§ 149. Indulgences. The distinction between the 
temporal and the eternal punishment due to sins has 
led to another feature of the Roman system, the pro- 
vision of a method of release from heavy penance, 
which is the temporal punishment, by means of what 
are called indulgences. Cardinal Gibbons defines : 
'' An indulgence is simply a remission in whole or in 
part, through the superabundant merits of Jesus 
Christ and his saints, of the temporal punishment 
due to God on account of sin, after the guilt and 
eternal punishment have been remitted." ^ This 
temporal punishment may be undergone '* either in 
this life or the next," and hence the indulgence may 
remit the sufferings of purgatory. But *' an indul- 
gence cannot be obtained for unforgiven sin. Before 
any one can obtain for himself the benefit of an in- 
dulgence, the guilt must have been washed away, 
and the eternal punishment, if his sin has been mor- 
tal, must have been forgiven." ^ Hence an indul- 
gence does not remit the guilt or eternal punishment 
of a sin, which must be done in the regular way 
through confession and absolution, nor does it give 
license to commit future sins. 

§ 150. The proof of indulgences brings into view 
unavoidably the theory upon which they operate. 
The great proof, put first by Gibbons as well as Per- 
rone, is the power of the keys. The argument is 
that if Christ conferred the greater, the power to for- 
give sins, that is, to remit the eternal punishment of 

1 F. F., p. 428. 2 Cath. Die, article " Indulgence." 



Indulgences. 285 

sins, he certainly must have included the less, the 
power to remit the temporal penalty/ Only one 
other scriptural proof is attempted by either Gibbons 
or Perrone, that of the restoration of the fellowship 
of the Church of Corinth to the man who had pre- 
viously been put under discipline at the direction of 
the apostle. Cardinal Gibbons says this man had 
been condemned to a '^ severe penance/' and calls 
the subsequent action of the apostle a remission of 
the penalty, that is an indulgence. But the punish- 
ment laid upon the man was not a penance. This is 
evident because the man seems to have been still 
impenitent, and still to lie under liability to '' the 
eternal punishment " of his sin, for he was apparently 
still continuing in the commission of his sin (i Cor. 
V. i), and in danger of eternal loss (vs. 5), and his 
punishment was exclusion from the fellowship of the 
Church and deliverance to Satan (vs. 4, 5) which was 
performed by the vote of the congregation of be- 
Hevers (2 Cor. ii. 6). The apostle therefore in his 
second epistle is directing that he be readmitted to 
the fellowship which he had utterly lost. 

As to the power of the keys, if the Roman Church 
possesses the authority to grant indulgences from 
this prerogative, it ought logically to be restricted to 
the remission of penalties which she has herself pre- 
scribed, as the Protestant Reformers argued.^ Car- 
dinal Gibbons seems to reason upon this ground, for 

1 Klee, a Catholic dogmatician, denies the vahdity of this argument, 
because priests can forgive sins, but cannot bestow indulgences. See 
in Hase, Pole7nik, p. 390. 

2 Pope Gelasius I. presented the same argument. See in Hase, Po- 
lemik, p. 391. 



286 The Roma7i Syste^n, 

he says that '^ a society which can inflict a punish- 
ment can also remit it," and his whole rational argu- 
ment is conducted upon that basis. But what, then, 
becomes of the remission of punishments in purga- 
tory by means of indulgences ? Are these punish- 
ments ''inflicted" by the Church militant? No! 
Can she, then, indulge them ? It was, no doubt, to 
meet this difficulty that another theory, and one in- 
consistent with this, was introduced and is now com- 
bined with it in Catholic theology, the theory that 
the power of granting indulgences is derived from 
the ''treasure of merits^' in the Church. Cardinal 
Gibbons introduces this theory into his discussion, 
for he defines the indulgence in the passage quoted 
above, as given " through the superabundant merits 
of Jesus Christ and his saints.'^ But if so, who shall 
distribute these merits ? Is there any evidence in 
Scripture that the pope has any authority over these 
merits ? or any commission to distribute them ? 
The Roman theology has no answer to give to these 
questions except to refer to the authority of the 
Church as expressed by Clement VI. in the bull 
Unigcnitiis where the doctrine of the treasure, and 
its commission to Peter and his successors is dog- 
matically affirmed.^ 

§ 151. But are CathoHc theologians aware into 
how close approximation to the Protestant doctrine 
of forgiveness this doctrine of indulgence through 
the superabundant merits of Jesus Christ brings 
them ? Suppose a man to have committed some 
sin, and to have come in true penitence and confessed 

1 See the Latin text in Harnack, Doggsch, iii., p. 517. 



Latent Protestantism. 287 

this to the priest, and thus received through the 
merits of Christ the remission of the eternal punish- 
ment of his sin. He may now obtain an indulgence, 
and then, through the same merits, he will receive 
the remission of the temporal punishment, and thus 
of the whole penalty. And the condition of the in- 
dulgence may have been the offering of a prayer for 
mercy in some specified church upon some special 
occasion. Now, here is a long, cumbersome, and 
complicated process, but what are its essential ele- 
ments ? Are they not repentance, confession, prayer 
for forgiveness, and the operation of the merits of 
Christ to remove every disability arising from the 
sin ? And what is that but precisely the Protestant 
doctrine that upon true repentance and hearty con- 
fession, God will for Christ's sake absolutely forgive 
and forever put away the sin of man ? The differ- 
ence is one of method, not of principle. For the 
simple direct method of the gospel (Luke xviii. 
13, 14) Rome has substituted the unnecessary medi- 
ation of the priest, and then encumbered that medi- 
ation with all sorts of difficulties, only to come down 
at last to what she might have had at first, the free 
forgiving grace of a pardoning God. 

§ 152. Perhaps the strongest objection which the 
Protestant feels to indulgences springs from their 
practical relations ; and one of the practical facts 
about indulgences as they are managed in our own 
day is their utter triviality. They are a great ob- 
stacle to the free operation of the infinite grace of 
God, but great as they are in this respect, in them- 
selves they often seem so ridiculously inadequate to 



288 The Roman System. 

all they profess to do as only to provoke the con- 
tempt of earnest men. Do I speak too strongly? 
There has fallen into my hands in some way a leaflet 
of the Apostleship of Prayer, the Holy League of 
the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This institution has its 
center in New York, and is presided over by a 
Jesuit. Among numerous other privileges conveyed 
by membership (which does not seem to have any 
special conditions attached, and may apparently be 
had for the asking), is this : " An indulgence of one 
hundred days each time that an associate, wearing 
the badge of the apostleship, repeats, orally or men- 
tally, the aspiration — ' thy kingdom come.' Also, 
seven years and seven quarantines, if worn visibly 
before the Blessed Sacrament exposed." The Prot- 
estant reader will probably require to be told that 
an indulgence of one hundred days remits as much 
penance as would be performed in a period of one 
hundred days under the old system of penitential 
discipline as it was practiced in the ancient Church. 
'* Seven quarantines " are seven times forty days of 
penance. Now, in the ancient Church this '' canoni- 
cal penance " had nothing trivial or easy about it. 
A man committing such a sin as adultery might have 
several years of penance to pass through, during 
which, in one period, he must stand among the 
" weepers," clothed in penitential garments, outside 
the doors of the church, not being admitted to the 
sight even of the worship of the church. It was as sad 
as the " scarlet letter " of Hawthorne's romance. Only 
gradually could he come to hear a part of the serv- 
ice, and only after several promotions be received 



Trivialities, 289 

again into full membership. But to-day, in the 
*' Apostleship of Prayer," if an adulterer will wear 
the badge ^ which may be a bit of ribbon, and is at all 
events an honorable distinction in the CathoHc's eye, 
upon the lapel of Ids coat at mass on Sunday morning ^ 
that is equivalent to " seven years and seven quaran- 
ti7tes " of the old discipline ! And every time he 
will tlwtk the aspiration named, he may gain one 
hundred days of release from penance ! Is not 
this, unless it is a shamefaced and imperfect Prot- 
estantism, utter trifling with the solemn necessities 
of souls ? 

§ 153. Faithfulness to the theme compels the ad- 
dition of another, a somewhat invidious as well as 
disagreeable topic, the abuse to which the confes- 
sional is subject for the attainment of immoral ends. 
We gladly accept what such writers as Cardinal Gib- 
bons say upon their own experience in the confes- 
sional. The Catholic Dictionary says : " Of all pas- 
toral ministrations we firmly believe there is none 
which involves a more self-denying devotion to a 
monotonous duty, none where the good effects are 
so plain and visible, and very few which are more 
seldom marred by human weakness and sin." We 
are glad to believe that in our own country and time 
the confessional is very carefully guarded from abuse. 
But the laws of the Church show that confession on 
the part of females to a celibate priesthood is full of 
peril to both penitent and priest. While priests are 
" under the most sacred obligations to abstain from 
all unnecessary questions, particularly from all such 
as might convey knowledge of %vsxs previously un- 



ago The Roman System, 

known to the penitent," ^ existing books of directions 
for the hearing of confessions show that very doubt- 
ful questions are actually asked, and the trail of sHme 
found in such a book as Gury's '' Moral Theology," ^ 
which ought to be called an Immoral Theology, and 
which cannot be read without the most profound 
disgust, show that the air of the confessional is trem- 
ulous with danger to all concerned. We must refer 
to more detailed works for the full particulars of 
seduction, deceit, and disgrace accompanying this 
institution.^ We are here concerned with their mean- 
ing for the truth or falsity of the system of doctrine 
of the Roman Church, and particularly for this por- 
tion of it. Our Saviour's test, '' By their fruits ye 
shall know them," condemns the confessional and 
the theory of the sacrament of penance. Sins should 
be confessed to God and their remedy left to his 
providence, when experience shows how dangerous 
it is for sinful human beings to talk over committed 
sin even under elaborate safeguards. 

§ 154. Yet the confessional is retained, and in spite 
of all the higher arguments which are presented in 
favor of it, the great argument for it is, without any 
rational doubt, the same as that which maintains the 

^ Cath. Diet., article " Penance." 

2 Compendium Theologi(B Moralls, auctore P. Joanne Petro Gury, S. 
y., etc., RatisboncB, 1874, Benziger Bros., New York. The copy before 
me is the copy employed in the seminary, as a student, by a priest in 
this country not yet fifty years old. Paul Bert translated a large por- 
tion of it into French, from which it was translated into English, and 
published under the title The Doctrine of the Jesuits, B. F. Bradbury 
& Co., Boston. 

3 Hase, Polemik, p. 375 fF. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, pp. 566 ff., 
632-638. 



The Inquisition, 291 

celibacy of the clergy, viz., the immense power which 
is hereby put into the hands of the Church. What- 
ever else Rome is or is not, she is undoubtedly 
greedy of power. The confessional makes the priest 
in a large measure master of the community in which 
he lives. He who knows the secrets of men, espe- 
cially their secret sins, rules them. But, viewed in 
the light of a larger Christian charity, this very 
feature of the system is one of the chief argu- 
ments against it. No human being can be trusted 
with such power with safety to himself or to others. 
Even if he could, he ought not to be. The object 
of the Church is to lead men, not to drive them. 
Her power resides in the force of love, not in the 
compulsion which springs from fear. Christians are 
'' called unto liberty." We " have not received the 
spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adop- 
tion." This liberty filled with rejoicing in the pres- 
ence and favor of God, is not consistent with the 
spirit of the fear of man ; and Rome ought not to 
cultivate such a fear, would not if her purposes were 
pure and her charity genuine and permeated with the 
spirit of the Master. 

§ 155. The Inquisition. A brief notice should be 
given of this appendage to the system of penance. 
The Roman Church, besides laying temporal pun- 
ishments upon the penitent, claims, and formerly 
exercised, the right of enforcing her doctrine by 
punishment for heresy. This she does by virtue of 
her pretensions to the office of sole authoritative 
teacher of religious truth. If she has the authority, 
men may be compelled to submit to it. This com- 



292 The Roman System, 

pulsory system was erected into a separate institu- 
tion by the establishment of regular inquisitorial 
methods under Innocent III. and the Council of 
Toulouse (1229). It spread over the different Cath- 
oHc countries, was particularly active in expelling 
Jews and Moors from Spain (by which it did incal- 
culable harm to that country), checked the progress 
of the Reformation in various lands, and was only 
suppressed in the present century (Spain, 1834). 
The methods of procedure were in grossest violation 
of the principles of justice, though, to be sure, this 
was true of secular and even Protestant secular tri- 
bunals, of the same age. An accusation was the 
equivalent of a condemnation in the majority of cases. 
The names of the witnesses were usually concealed 
from the accused, torture was employed at the be- 
ginning of the process to extort confession, a pre- 
mium was put upon information and upon conviction 
by giving the property of the convicted to the ac- 
cusers and the court, and the play ended with the 
delivery of the condemned to the secular arm with 
the prayer for mercy, which was understood to be a 
demand for immediate execution by burning ! In 
Spain, down to the year 1809 there had been 341,021 
sentences, all of them practically capital. These 
facts are a sufficient illustration of the theme, and the 
plainest refutation both of the theory that the power 
of punishment resides in the Church, and of the 
claim that the Church c^an sit in judgment on sins, 
whether in the inquisition or the confessional. A 
legitimate, God-given, and God-guided power would 
never have been thus abused. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE LORDS SUPPER. 

• § 156. In approaching the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper we approach at the same time one of the 
most compHcated and important of the doctrines of 
the system and the central point and culmination of 
the worship of the Church. Here unite speculation 
and devotion. The mass is nothing but a prolonged 
and elaborate celebration of the Lord's Supper ; so 
that at every great festival of the Church, and at full 
service upon every Lord's day, the holy eucharist is 
the center of interest. Nothing, therefore, stands so 
prominent before the Catholic as this sacrament. 
His deepest religious experiences are associated with 
it, his profoundest feelings stirred by it. 

§ 157. The fundamental idea from which all the 
rest of the Catholic doctrine upon this subject fol- 
lows, is that of the real presence in the sacrament, 
of the very Lord Jesus Christ. '* After the conse- 
cration of the bread and wine," says the Council of 
Trent,^ *' our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, 
is truly, really, and substantially contained under the 
species of those sensible things ... by a manner of 
existing, which though we can scarcely express it in 
words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated 
by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to be- 
lieve to be possible unto God." From this starting 

1 Schaff, p. 126. 

293 



294 ^^^^ Romait System, 

point all that is peculiar in the Roman doctrine natu- 
rally follows. 

Two elements are, now, carefully to be distin- 
guished in the doctrine, for the Supper is considered, 
on the one hand, as a sacrament, the holy Eucharist, 
and on the other, as a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the 
mass. 

As a sacrament, this, like every other, has its 
matter and its form. The matter is the bread and 
wine ; the form, the words of institution, '' This is my 
body ;" '' This is the cup of my blood, the new and 
eternal covenant, a mystery of the faith, which is 
shed for you and for many for the remission of sin." ^ 
As soon as these words have been pronounced over 
the elements, *' the veritable body of our Lord, and 
his veritable blood, together with his soul and divin- 
ity, are under the species of bread and wine ; but the 
body indeed under the species of bread, and the 
blood under the species of wine, by force of the 
words ; but the body itself under the species of 
wine, and the blood under the species of bread, 
and the soul under both, by force of that natural 
connection and concomitancy whereby the parts of 
Christ our Lord, who hath now risen from the 
dead to die no more, are united together ; and the 
divinity, furthermore, on account of the admir- 
able hypostatical union thereof with his body and 
soul.^^^ The Council' adds : *' By the consecration 
of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is 
made of the whole substance of the bread into the 
substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the 

^ Cat. Rom., ii., iv., xviii. xx. 2 Schaff, p. 129 f. 



The Mass a Sacrifice, 295 

whole substance of the wine into the substance of 
his blood ; which conversion is by the holy Catholic 
Church suitably and properly called Transubstantia- 
tion." The doctrine of " concomitancy '' here 
affirmed is the theoretical basis upon which the 
disciplinary regulation, that the cup shall be withheld 
from the non-officiating communicant, is grounded, 
since thereby the undivided and whole Christ is re- 
ceived under the form of bread as truly as under 
both forms of bread and wine. The real presence is 
the basis of rendering "in veneration the worship of 
latria, which is due to the true God, to this most 
holy sacrament,^' ^ which is customary at every mass 
when the host is elevated by the priest and the con- 
gregation fall down before it. '' For,'^ says the 
Council,^ '' we believe that same God to be present 
therein of whom the eternal Father, when introduc- 
ing him into the world, says : And let all the angels 
of God adore him.'^ 

But there is also in the mass a sacrifice. " He, 
therefore, our God and Lord, though he was about 
to offer himself once on the altar of the cross unto 
God the Father, by means of his death, there to 
operate an eternal redemption ; nevertheless, because 
his priesthood was not to be extinguished by his 
death, in the last Supper, on the night in which he 
was betrayed, that he might leave to his own be- 
loved spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice, such as 
the nature of man requires, whereby that bloody 
sacrifice, once to be accomplished upon the cross, 
might be represented, and the memory thereof re- 

1 Ibid., p. 131. 



296 The Roman System, 

main even unto the end of the world, and its salutary 
virtue be appHed to the remission of those sins which 
we daily commit, . . . offered up to God the Father 
his own body and blood under the species of bread 
and wine, and . . . commanded the apostles and 
their successors in the priesthood to offer them.'^ ^ 
It is to be noted that the sacrifice of the mass is not 
intended to take the place of the sacrifice of Calvary 
or to detract in any way from the dignity of that. It 
is a *' representation " and a '' commemoration " of 
that. Yet it is, as the Roman Catechism says, '' not 
a mere {imdani) commemoration of that sacrifice 
which was made upon the cross, but also a truly 
propitiatory sacrifice, by which God is rendered pla- 
cated and propitious toward us."^ In fact, the two 
sacrifices are represented as, in a sense, identical, for 
we read further in the Catechism : '' Therefore we 
confess tha.t it is and ought to be regarded as one 
and the same sacrifice which is made in the mass and 

offered upon the cross For the bloody and 

the unbloody victims are not two victims, but one 
only, whose sacrifice ... is daily renewed in the 
eucharist."^ Cardinal Gibbons adds that the two 
sacrifices have the same " High Priest — Jesus Christ." 
Thus there is in the mass a true sacrifice, which not 
only commemorates but also repeats the sacrifice of 
Christ, and possesses expiatory power for the sins of 
the living and the dead. 

§ 158. Roman Ideal. These formal and cold defi- 
nitions do not, however, express the truth, as it 
appears to the devout Catholic, in its living power. 

1 Ibid., p. 176 f. 2 n., iv., Ixiii. 3 ibid,^ Ixi. 



Ideal of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, 297 

The Church, says Mohler substantially/ is upon one 
side of its being Christ himself. The Redeemer did 
not live eighteen hundred years ago, to disappear 
from the earth and leave only his memory to his 
Church to be revered like that of any other dead 
hero ; but he still lives in it, is still active in the sac- 
raments, introducing the soul into the Church by 
baptism, estabhshing it in confirmation, forgiving it 
in penance, and so on. In the same way he did not 
offer a single sacrifice at a definite point in past time, 
then to remit this sacrificial activity, and leave his 
Church without a sacrifice, but he is continually 
offering up himself to the Father for men. Hence 
there must be in the Church always a continual 
memorial of the sacrifice, which shall be also a con- 
tinuation of it, and this is given in the eucharist. 
The sacrifice of Calvary and that of the altar are 
really but one sacrifice, since neither is complete 
without the other, the two forming together one 
organic whole. Christ offered upon Calvary alone 
would remain a distant and unknown object, a mere 
offering ; but Christ condescending to us upon the 
altar is that offering brought near and made real and 
personal to us. So that the offering of Calvary with- 
out that of the altar would be defective, and there- 
fore the sacrament of the altar is a true sacrifice and 
essential to the rest. To quote from this point 
Mohler's own words : '' The eucharistic sacrifice 
may be viewed, in accordance with the purposes just 
developed, from a twofold point of view. Since the 
Church in general, and every separate congregation 

1 Symbolik, p. 300 ff. 



298 The Roman System. 

of it, understands that it was founded by the offering 
of the Son of God and by faith in the same, and that 
consequently it owes to him its existence, the eu- 
charistic offering is to be conceived, first, as an offer- 
ing of praise and thanksgiving. The Church de- 
clares that it is incapable of expressing its thanks in 
any other way than by offering again to God Him 
who became the sacrifice of the world. It says in 
effect, ' Thou wast willing to view us as thy children 
in grace and mercy for Christ's sake. Permit us then 
to venerate thee thankfully as our Father, in Christ, 
thy Son, here present. We possess nothing else 
which we could bring to thee but Christ ; graciously 
accept our offering.' When the congregation does 
this through the priest it confesses perpetually what 
Christ has become to it, and ever remains. It is not 
merely the inward acts of thanks, veneration, and 
recognition that it offers, but rather Christ, present 
in the sacrament, is offered up. These affections of 
the spirit are awakened by the presence and offering 
of the present Redeemer, are supported, nourished, 
and developed by him, but they are in themselves 
unworthy of being offered to God. Christ, the sacri- 
fice in the worship, is the richest, most inexhaustible 
source of the deepest devotion ; but in order to be 
this, a present Saviour, offering himself for the world, 
is demanded, to whom, as its external object, the 
heart of man may attach itself, and to which it may 
expand. But the congregation also continually ac- 
knowledges itself as sinful, in need of forgiveness, 
and it seeks to appropriate more perfectly the merits 
of Jesus Christ. In this aspect the offering is a sin 



The Real Presence. 299 

offering, and the present Christ is to make us his 
own possession, and this in an increasing degree. 
Christ, present and capable of being recognized by 
those spiritually minded, says uninterruptedly to the 
Father above, ^ Behold graciously in me thy penitent 
and believing people;' and to his brethren below, 
' Come to me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest, to every one who heartily 
turns to me, mercy, the forgiveness of his sins, and 
all grace/ Consequently in the liturgical language 
of the Greek as well as the Latin Church it is said 
rightly that it is Christ who in his holy ceremony 
offers up himself to God ; he is the offering and the 
High Priest in one. But we, recognizing in the eu- 
charistic Christ the Christ who gave himself to die 
the death of the cross out of love for us, say, when 
the host is elevated, as far and wide as the Catholic 
Church extends, in faith in a so visible mercy, out 
of which spring humility, trust, love, and penitence, 
* O Jesus, to thee I live, O Jesus, to thee I die, O 
Jesus, thine am I dead and alive.' " 

For convenience of discussion we may divide the 
theme into two parts, the Real Presence and the Sac- 
rifice, and treat these successively. 

I. The Real Presence. 

§ 159. The Biblical Argument for the Real 
Presence.^ The argument of Perrone, quite in 

1 I proceed in these pages upon the supposition that the true Prot- 
estant position is that of a denial of the real presence, although a few- 
Protestants may still be found who accept it. In the Church of Eng- 



300 The Roman System, 

agreement with that of Cardinal Gibbons, though 
drawn out at great length, may be condensed into 
the following steps/ It is, first, a scriptural argu- 
ment. Christ promised in the sixth of John, to give 
to his disciples his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. 
He fulfilled this promise when he instituted the sac- 
rament ot the supper, for he declared the bread 
which he gave them then to be his body and the cup 
to be his blood. Hence his body and blood are 
really present in the sacrament of the altar. This 
view is confirmed by the universal tradition of the 
Church, and contains nothing opposed to right 
reason. 

Evidently the argument stands or falls with the 
interpretation of the sixth of John. The passage 
especially considered is that beginning wdth verse 
51, ''I am the living bread which came down out of 
heaven," etc. This is to be taken literally, says 
Perrone, as referring to the oral manducation of the 
real body of Christ. Christ is speaking of the eu- 
charist, which is evident from the analogy of the 
manna, just mentioned. As that was a real food, so 
must the thing here spoken of be a real food, which 
the eucharist is. The phraseology employed carries 
this meaning, and more especially so because when 
*' eating " is used in Scripture figuratively, it is used 
in a bad sense, as in Ps. xxvii. 2. Then the antith- 
eses employed, food and drink, eating and drink- 
land there are some such ; but among Lutherans in Germany there are 
few now who do not acknowledge that the Scriptures give no solid 
foundation for what was the original Lutheran opinion. 
^ Op. cif., vol. iii., p. 143 ff. 



The Sixth of John. 301 

ing, flesh and blood, are too direct and too frequent 
to admit of a figurative interpretation. And the 
same is indicated by the future tenses (" shall give," 
''shall have'^) of verses 27 and 53. That the man- 
ducation meant was no merely spiritual manduca- 
tion, Perrone seeks also to prove from the fact that 
the Jews evidently understood Christ as demanding 
a literal oral manducation (vs. 52), and he, though 
accustomed to explain misunderstandings, did not 
undeceive them. Then the phrases used, as, for ex- 
ample, '' He that eateth me shall live by me,^' ex- 
clude any reference to Christ's literal death, and so 
point to the sacramental eating. Then, Christ con- 
firms his teaching by a future miracle, that of his 
ascension, which makes the interpretation involving 
a miracle in the Supper congruous. Christ's charac- 
ter forbids, also, that he should put an unnecessary 
stumbling block in the way of the Jews, as he did, 
if he did not mean this manducation to be a literal 
one. The apostle John, too, would have explained 
the saying, as he does others, if it were not to be 
taken literally. And, lastly, the unanimous consent 
of the fathers makes the rendering here given 
certain. 

§ 160. The interpretation of the Catholic Church 
will have an advantage with some minds because it 
is apparently literal and simple ; but a careful con- 
sideration of the context as a whole renders it impos- 
sible. The premise upon which the entire argument 
depends is the position that Christ made a promise 
here which he literally fulfilled when he established 
the Lord's S upper. If this is so, then, by parity of 



302 The Ro77ian System, 

reasoning, in John iv. 14, " The water that I shall 
give him shall become in him a well of water," is also 
a promise demanding a future fulfillment in an insti- 
tution parallel to that of the Supper; but there is no 
such fulfillment. Neither in the one case nor in the 
other is there any such promise. The true explana- 
tion is much simpler. The Jews had followed Jesus 
for the material benefits which he was able to confer 
upon them, as he had done when he fed the multi- 
tude (ver. 26). The first allusion to "meat" was 
called out by this circumstance. Then when Jesus 
demanded belief in himself, they asked for a sign, and 
they mentioned that of the manna in the desert as a 
proof of Moses' mission, and hence, on occasion of 
the reference made by the Jews, the figure of bread 
was easily and naturally introduced into the dis- 
course. It wasn't Moses that gave you the manna, 
Christ says, but the Father ; and the manna was, 
after all, but little, for the true bread is still to be 
given, and that bread I am. The very word '^ true " 
shows that " bread " is to be taken figuratively, for 
the manna was true bread in a literal sense, but not 
true bread in a figurative sense — that is, not bread 
capable of doing the great thing demanded, that of 
** giving life to the world." And, to make it per- 
fectly clear that the *' bread " is figurative and the 
*' eating " figurative, as well as to show what that 
eating is, it is immediately added (35), "He that 
conicth to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth 
on me shall never thirst." And, as in verse 33 the 
bread " giveth life," so in verse 40 believing gives 
"eternal life/' 



The Sixth of John, 303 

Now with this everything in the following verses 
is perfectly in agreement. The only argument which 
Perrone brings possessing any force is that which 
may be summarized in the form that the figure is too 
constantly employed to be intended literally. But 
this argument has no force in view of the clearness 
with which the figure has once been introduced. The 
'' future tenses " are well explained when it is re- 
membered that the flesh was to be given upon the 
cross, which was at a future date.-^ And as to Christ's 
leaving the Jews under an evident misunderstand- 
ing, he did it repeatedly in his ministry,^ by nearly 
every parable which he uttered (compare Matt, 
xiii. 11); and in this case he did what he almost 
always did in similar cases ; he explained the diffi- 
culty to the disciples, when they also fell into it, for 
he added to them, " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; 
th^ flesh profiteth nothing," by which he rejected the 
interpretation of literal oral manducation, and pointed 
out the true way of eating, adding still further, " The 
words that I have spoken unto you " — and words 
are to be received by the mind, by believing — '^ are 
spirit and are life." 

§ 161. We thus find the fundamental position of 
Perrone, that John vi. contains a promise of provid- 

1 Perrone seems to have been led away by the Vulgate in taking 
verse 53 of future time. That version has " habebitls'' with the Itala; 
but all the Greek MSS. and texts have exere, making the condition a 
general supposition, which should be rendered strictly, " Except ye 
are eating the flesh " etc. (equivalent to "Whenever ye do not eat"), 
" ye do not have life," etc., which expresses a general truth, true then, 
and not simply in the future, and so is against oral manducation. 

2 We, of course, admit that it is the general custom in John's Gospel 
to explain such difficulties. 



304 The Roman Syste7n, 

ing a body of Christ which could be Hterally eaten 
to be invahd. Equally invalid is the next step in his 
argument, that the institution of the Lord's Sup- 
per was the fulfillment of this promise, inasmuch 
as it constituted the elements of the sacrament, the 
real body and blood of Christ. The question be- 
tween Protestants and Catholics, says Perrone, is 
whether the words '' This is my body " are to be 
taken literally or metaphorically. If metaphorically, 
there ought to be some reason for this, either in the 
nature of the material employed, or in some impli- 
cation that the phrase is figurative, or in common 
usage. We should reply that all three of these rea- 
sons speak here for the metaphor. Bread is not 
body ; the circumstances were such, the living Christ 
himself distributing the bread, that the literal sense 
was absolutely excluded, since the disciples could 
not possibly understand the bread he held in his 
hand to be identical with his body, and so take the 
words literally ; and common usage is clearly in 
favor of employing '' is " in the sense of '' signifies." 
Then, says Perrone, the words used in blessing the 
cup are so emphatic that they cannot be taken figur- 
atively. " For," he continues, '' according to the 
force of the Greek, they ought to be rendered : ' For 
this is that blood of mine, that blood of the new cove- 
nant, that blood which is shed for many for the remis- 
sion of sins.' " But this is a very much strained inter- 
pretation of the Greek, where the word translated by 
Perrone's ''that" (Lat illc) is the simple article, and 
gives no such emphasis as is conveyed by the trans- 
lation. But if it did, what of it ? Is the emphasjs 



(( 



Hoc est Corpus Meum^ 305 



upon the blood as blood ? Is anything lost as to 
the essential meaning if we read, '' This represents my 
blood, that very, weighty blood which I shall shed 
for forgiveness of sins, and for the establishment of 
a new covenant"? But Perrone continues with his 
argument. The paralleHsm with Exodus xxiv. 8, 
'' Behold the blood of the covenant,^' makes the 
meaning literal. That blood was literal blood ; so is 
this. Is there any such parallehsm ? Then, again, 
in so solemn a matter Christ ought to have spoken 
literally. But did he ? And, finally, Perrone urges 
the difficulties and contradictions of Protestants, and 
the entire absurdity of the whole Protestant denial 
of the Hteral interpretation. In a word, the argu- 
ment seems to be about upon a level with Luther's 
when he wrote '^ Hoc est corpus meiini " upon the 
tablecloth at Marburg, and finally seized the cloth 
and shook it in the face of his opponent, saying that 
he '^ stuck to the text." In spite of all that has been 
said, it still remains that the '' is " may mean '' signi- 
fies," and that it most probably does. If so great a 
doctrine as that of the real presence cannot be pro- 
vided with more abundant and better proofs, the 
Roman theology will be held by the world at large 
to have failed to make out its case. 

§ 162. Cardinal Gibbons adds an argument from 
the apostle Paul, i Cor. x. 16 and xi. 23-29, in which 
passages is found the account of the institution of 
the Supper.^ Many of the arguments in favor of the 
Roman system from the New Testament are merely 
verbal, and have no force when one seeks to pene- 

1 F.F., p. 336 ff. 
20 



3o6 The Roman System, 

trate to the meaning of the passages cited in distinc- 
tion from their form of expression. This is true of 
the cardinal's argument here ; but for a verbal argu- 
ment it is so well put, and so likely to be misleading, 
that it requires an explicit answer. After quoting the 
passage at length, and especially the clause, '' whoso- 
ever shall eat .... unworthily, shall be guilty of the 
body and the blood of the Lord," he asks the ques- 
tion : '' Could St. Paul express more clearly his belief 
in the real presence than he has done here ?" We may 
admit, in reply, that if there was any evidence that Paul 
did believe in the real presence, these words would 
seem to express that idea very well. They certainly 
accord with the doctrine. But every thinker will per- 
ceive a vast difference between formal accord, and 
the intended teaching of a doctrine. To extract from 
his argument still farther : *' Surely no one could be 
said to partake of that divine food by eating ordinary 
bread.^' Why not? If partaking of the body of 
Christ is receiving the gift of eternal life by believing 
upon him, why may not the act of faith be put forth 
in increased energy in consequence of the act of eat- 
ing common bread, when that bread is conceived as 
the appointed memorial of Christ's death, and so 
brings that death vividly before the believer and 
preaches to him with power its message of reconcili- 
ation ? '' ' Guilty of the body and blood of the Lord ' 
. . . signify that he who receives the sacrament un- 
worthily shall be guilty of the sin of high treason, 
and of shedding the blood of his Lord in vain. But 
how^ could he be guilty of a crime so enormous, if 
he had taken in the eucharist only a particle of bread 



a 



Guilty of the Body and Blood. ' ' 307 



and wine ? Would a man be accused of homicide, 
in this commonwealth, if he were to offer violence to 
the statue or painting of the governor ? Certainly 
not. In Hke manner, St. Paul would not be so un- 
reasonable as to declare a man guilty of trampling 
on the blood of his Saviour by drinking in an un- 
worthy manner a little wine in memory of him." 
But the reference to homicide is totally inappropriate, 
since that it is an overt act, and no man is guilty of 
homicide by a mere thought, whereas in the Chris- 
tian sense the thought of the heart makes the sin 
(Matt. V. 28). Suppose the bread and wine are the 
body and blood of the Lord in the Catholic sense ; 
a man who eats them unworthily does nothing dif- 
ferent from him who eats them worthily, except in 
his inward disposition, and he may have the wrong 
disposition of heart, and so fall under the condemna- 
tion of God, whether he eat the '' real " body, or only 
a symbol. And, on the other hand, if a man were 
to trample literally, with his feet, upon the transub- 
stantiated body of the Lord, he would be no more 
guilty of real apostasy from God and blasphemy 
against him than he would if he should designedly 
mix up, as did the Corinthians, the sacred emblems, 
considered only as emblems, with common food for 
the sake of expressing his entire indifference to the 
gospel and his contempt for the work of Christ. The 
true sin in all these things is the sin of the heart. 
This the cardinal blurs by his argument. And when, 
finally, he interprets the text, " Not discerning the 
body of the Lord," thus : " The unworthy receiver is 
condemned for not recognizing or discerning in the 



3o8 The Roman System. 

eucharist the body of the Lord," he errs ; for the 
context shows that the meaning is that he who does 
not separate (discern) the sacred supper from the 
preceding ordinary meal, and thus degrades it be- 
cause he is not ahve to his true relations with Christ, 
and is not in the exercise of a living faith in him, is 
guilty and shall receive condemnation. 

§ 163. The Historical Argument. This is con- 
ducted upon an altogether unhistorical method, but 
one which we have seen used repeatedly before. 
The thesis to be maintained has been set forth, and 
the disputant proceeds to find proof texts for it. 
Of investigation, of attempt to find the atmosphere 
and real meaning of the writer, even of effort to com- 
prehend text by means of context, there is nothing. 
We may, perhaps, profitably follow down the indi- 
vidual arguments for a little.'^ 

Perrone, writing when he did, could not have 
mentioned the " Teaching ; " but we may pause to 
remark that, though the Lord's Supper is made a 
large topic in that little work, and though prayers 
to be employed at its celebration are given, there is 
no trace in the tract of a doctrine of the real pres- 
ence. Neither is there anything in Clement of 
Rome. The first two writers after the New Tes- 
tament fail, therefore, to support the Roman doctrine. 

Perrone begins his citations with Ignatius. The 
passage is Smyrneans vii., where the eucharist is 
styled the ^' flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ." No 
one need draw from this expression the doctrine of 
the real presence who does not find it in the New 

i Op. cit., vol. iii., p. 168 ff. 



History Against the Real Presence. 309 

Testament. But he does not cite Romans vii., where 
we read : '' I desire the bread of God, the heavenly 
bread, the bread of Hfe w^hich is the flesh of Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of 
the seed of David and Abraham ; and I desire the 
drink of God, namely his blood, which is incorrupt- 
ible love and eternal life!' Certainly, there is no 
thought here of a literal blood. Justin Martyr con- 
fessedly calls the consecrated bread '' not common 
bread and common drink, but the flesh and blood 
of that Jesus who was made flesh." ^ Irenaeus 
makes use of similar expressions. But Perrone 
does not get the meaning of either of these writers, 
because he is not intent upon getting their complete 
thought. They represent what Hase calls ^ the 
" Asiatic view," viz., that the spiritual Logos was 
connected with the consecrated bread and wine in 
a way similar to that in which he once entered flesh, 
so that the elements became his renewed body, and 
participation in them gave immortality to our body.^ 
But the bread and wine remained bread and wine 
just as truly as the body of Christ remained a real 
body after the union of the Logos with it. Hence 
Irenaeus' statement: ''The bread, .... when it 
receives the invocation of God is no longer common 
bread, but the eiicharist, consisting of two realities, 
earthly and heavenly I' ^ a statement which Perrone 
quotes in his " difficulties," ^ and explains of the 

1 Apology, I., 66. 2 Polemik, p. 406. 

3 Quite in accord with this is Ignatius' expression " medicine of 
immortahty," Eph. xx. 

* Adv. Her., IV., xviii., 5. ^ Op. cif., vol. iii., p. 176. 



310 The Roman System. 

divine and human nature, but which he should have 
allowed to come into the original discussion of his 
authority, for it shows manifestly that the real pres- 
ence of Irenaeus is by no means identical with the 
real presence of the Catholic Church. 

With Tertullian, Perrone has still worse experi- 
ences. He quotes Marcion, IV., xl., '* Having taken 
the bread and given it to his disciples, he made it 
his own body by saying," etc. But he does not 
quote the vciy next zvords, which are quite remark- 
able, and completely destroy his argument, for the 
passage continues, *' by saying, ' This is my body,' 
that is, tJie figure of viy body. A figure there could 
not have been unless there were first a veritable 
body. An empty thing, or a phantom, is incapable 
of a figure." This addition explodes the proof of 
the Roman doctrine at this point, because Tertullian 
is speaking of the real body of Christ while he was 
upon earth, and is contending against Gnostic doce- 
tism, and hence " veritable body " means actual body, 
and '' figure " means something not a body. Per- 
rone, to be sure, adds a part of these remaining 
words of the passage in his *' difficulties,'^ where 
he has a long explanation of possible meanings of 
the word '' figure " in the fathers, '' in respect to spe- 
cies, in respect to the mystical body of Christ, which 
is the Church, in respect to the body of Christ in 
heaven, where it is not clothed in the sacramental 
species ; sometimes also with respect to the reality 
of the body which is exhibited by an external fig- 
ure." But no amount of explanation will extricate 

^ Ibid., p. 177. 



Tertiillian and Origen, 311 

him from the " difficulty " which he has met in the 
plain meaning of Tertullian's words. Indeed, this 
is Tertullian's common form of speech, for he makes 
bread a '' representative '* ^ of the body, and again a 
^' figure " ^ of it ; and in another place the wine is said 
to be consecrated '' for a memorial of his blood." ^ 
All these expressions give utterance to the thought 
of Hase's " African school," which regards the ele- 
ments as the symbol of the body of Christ, '' since 
their reception represents the real communication of 
the divine Logos to believers." * In complete accord 
with TertulHan, another of this school of thinking, 
Origen, writes : '' It is not the material of the bread, 
but the word which is said over it which is of ad- 
vantage to him who eats it not unworthily of the 
Lord. And these things, indeed, are said of tlie 
typical and symbolical body. But many things might 
be said about the Word himself who became flesh 
and true meat, of which he that eateth shall assuredly 
live forever, no worthless person being able to eat it ; 
for if it were possible for one who continues worth- 
less to eat of him who became flesh, who was the 
Word and the living bread, it would not have been 
written that ' every one who eats of this bread shall 
live forever.' " ^ This passage cannot be made to 
agree with the idea of the identification of the ele- 
ments with the body of Christ. 

1 Marcion, i., 14. 2 i^id,^ iii,, 19. 

2 De Anima, c, 17. * Polemik, p. 407. 

^ Comm. de Matt., c. 14. Similar is Clement of Alexandria, who 
speaks (Paedag. ii., 2) of a '' -mixture oi the liquid and the Word," 
and adds : " They who by faith partake of it are sanctified both in 
body and soul." 



312 The Roman System. 

§ 164. In fact, in this early period there is no con- 
sistent and developed view of the relation of the ele- 
ments of the Lord's Supper to the great realities with 
which they are connected. Harnack puts the posi- 
tion of these fathers as follows : ^ '* While they con- 
ceived divine gifts of grace in a purely spiritual way, 
they could think of the benefits conveyed by the 
holy ceremony only as spiritual (faith, knowledge, 
i. c, eternal life), and the sacred elements could only 
be recognized as the mysterious vehicles of the same. 
There was as yet no reflection upon the distinction 
between symbol and vehicle : rather the symbol was 
the vehicle, and vice versa. A special relation be- 
tween the reception of the elements and the forgive- 
ness of sins one seeks in vain. It was at that time, 
under the prevailing idea of sin and forgiveness, im- 
possible. The point upon which importance was 
laid was the strengthening of faith and knowledge 
and the assurance of eternal life ; and to this a par- 
ticipation seemed to be necessary, in which not com- 
mon bread and wine, but a '' spiritual food " was 
received. There was still little reflection ; but cer- 
tainly the idea moved betw^een the two limits, of the 
purpose to be just to the traditional, marvelous 
words of institution, and of the fundamental con- 
viction that the spiritual is only to be attained by 
means of the spiritual." Then later he says : ^ " A 
problem in reference to the relation of the visible 
elements to the body of Christ (whether realistic or 
symbolic) suggested itself, so far as we can judge, 
to no one. The symbol is the mystery, and the 

^ Dogmenges ch'i elite , i., p. 180 (2d edition), 2 /^/^,^ p, 297. 



Transitbstantiation, 313 

mystery could not be conceived without symbol. 
We understand today by symbol a thing which is 
not what it signifies : then they understood by sym- 
bol a thing which in some sense or other is really 
that which it denotes. On the other side, however, 
the truly heavenly was, in the view of that day, 
always in or beneath the appearance which it as- 
sumed, without being identical with it. Accord- 
ingly, the distinction between a symbolical and a 
reaHstic conception of the Lord's Supper is alto- 
gether to be rejected. It would be more correct 
to distinguish between a materialistic, a ' dyophy- 
sitic,' and a docetic conception, although this dis- 
tinction could not be considered as strictly accurate. 
In the popular view the consecrated elements w^ere 
heavenly fragments, of magical power (Cyprian, de 
Laps, 25 ; Eusebius, H. E., vi. 44), with which the 
multitude in the third century already associated 
many a superstitious idea, which the priests let pass, 
or else shared.'* 

We shall not follow Perrone's further historical 
proofs, since his failure to make out his case in the 
second century carries with it failure to show that 
the real presence is a doctrine of original New Tes- 
tament Christianity, and since at a later point we 
shall have a fuller opportunity to review the devel- 
opment of the Roman doctrine of the Lord's Supper 
in its whole extent. 

§ 165. The Theory of the Real Presence. 
Transubstantiation. So remarkable a doctrine as 
that of the real presence could not be adopted with- 
out some attempt to make that presence conceivable 



314 T^Ji^ Ro77ian System, 

to the mind by explaining the process by which it is 
introduced. It is for this purpose that the theory of 
transubstantiation was developed. This affirms a 
conversion of the '' substance " of the bread and 
wine into the '' substance " of the body and blood of 
the Lord. The distinction between the ''substance" 
and the *' accidents " of the bread and wine, which 
is intimated in the phraseology of the symbols, has 
sometimes been developed at great length ; and some 
distinction of this kind is necessary, since it is evident 
that the bread appears after the transubstantiation 
exactly as it did before. The " accidents," form, 
color, taste, weight, and even chemical constitution, 
remain as they were. The change must therefore be 
somewhere else, and this elsewhere is defined by the 
Roman councils as the '' substance." 

Perrone's argumentation upon this subject is ex- 
ceedingly brief ^ It may be condensed into a single 
sentence. The words of institution declare the host 
to be not bread, but the Lord's body ; now, it was 
once bread; and if it is now the Lord's body, it must 
have been changed into that body. This argument 
he sustains by an appeal to tradition, claiming, in the 
words of Leibnitz, '* pious antiquity " for it, and be- 
ginning some special quotations in its favor with 
Cyril of Alexandria. He also refers briefly to the 
ancient liturgies. This is all. 

§ 166. Now, of course, if the real presence is 
proved, the theory of transubstantiation may be 
admitted without making unnecessary opposition. 
Yet it throws light back upon the unreality of that 

1 op. cit., vol. iii., pp. 187-195. 



Difficulties with Transitbstantiation, 315 

supposed presence when we find in how many dififi- 
culties this theory of the transubstantiation is in- 
volved. The pious CathoHc may be inchned to refer 
all to the miracle-working power of God; but the 
theologians of the Church have raised a long series 
of questions which have exhibited the untenability 
of the hypothesis. What becomes of the body of 
the Lord w^hen it is digested in the human stomach ? 
Origen said '} '' Even the meat which has been sanc- 
tified through the word of God and prayer, in accord- 
ance with the fact that it is material, goes into the 
belly and is cast out into the draught," quoting Matt. 
XV. 17 ; but Paschasius rejected this as irreverent, and 
it was afterwards branded in the Church by the name 
of Stercoranism. With reference to this and a large 
number of similar suppositions, such as the case in 
which a mouse had gnawed the consecrated wafer, or 
when it had corrupted in common decay, Thomas 
Aquinas put forward the explanation that "when 
there is such a change on the part of the accidents 
that it would not be sufficient to work a corruption 
of the bread and wine, the body of Christ does not 
cease to be under the sacrament. . . . But if such a 
change should be made that the substance of the 
bread and wine would be corrupted, the body and 
blood would not remain under this sacrament." ^ 
Perrone in different language draws out the same 
position.^ But consider for a moment to what all 
this leads. The true body and blood of the Lord 

^ Comm. in Matt., 14. 

2 Quoted by Hase, p. 418, from Summa, p. Hi., qu. 77, art. 4. 

3 Loco citato, p. 194. 



3i6 The Roman System. 

depart from the sacrament, according to the express 
statement of Perrone, " provided the same species 
[bread and wine] are changed by chemical opera- 
tion."^ Invoking modern chemistry is a most fatal 
thing for this theory. Bread is bread because there 
are a fixed number of chemical substances brought 
together, and these are what they are because they 
have a fixed number of the ultimate chemical atoms 
in fixed combinations. The material body of Christ, 
which is the body that is present by the Catholic 
theology in the transubstantiated bread and wine, is 
what it is because it has a number of quite different 
chemical substances, which owe their identity to 
the combination of certain atoms in fixed chemical 
combinations. These ultimate atoms are the sub- 
stance in which all the properties of the bodies in 
question ultimately reside. To change the sub- 
stance of the bread into the substance of the body, 
the atoms of the bread must be changed for other 
atoms, at least in part, and the combinations must 
be totally changed. That is what a change in 
substance is, and, therefore, what must occur in 
transubstantiation. But, says Perrone, the moment 
you touch the chemical composition of the bread the 
body of the Lord departs ! That is, the moment of 
its coming by transubstantiation is the moment of its 
departure ! The sacrament is made and is destroyed 
at the same moment and by the same act. 

Or, if it be said that under the ecclesiastical term 
" accidents " are included even atoms and their fixed 

1 Quoted by Hase (p. 418) from the larger edition. The Latin is: 
" Sic cess at dum per chymicam operationem ecedem species mutantur.'* 



Physics and Metaphysics. 317 

combinations, what is that but saying that a change 
into a '' material body " may take place without re- 
gard to the laws of matter ? But that is to deny the 
"material" change; and thus to fall back into, the 
old view of two substances ; or into the Lutheran 
view of an " iiiy with, and under " presence. Does 
the theory of transubstantiation thus actually trans- 
form Catholics into Lutherans ? 

In fact, the whole idea of a change in the sub- 
stance without a change in the attributes, a change 
of bread into the substance of the body of the Lord 
while it remains of the same appearance and taste, is 
an idea belonging to the infancy of philosophy and 
science. We know substance only through its at- 
tributes, and a change of substance is a change of 
attributes either by physics or by metaphysics. In 
the Middle Ages men might talk of unchanged at- 
tributes because they did not know what they were 
saying. Today it is impossible. The doctrine of 
transubstantiation is not '' above reason ;" it is '' con- 
trary to reason." It is the suicide of reason, and 
would lead logically to the denial of all our powers 
of thought, and so rob lis of all knowledge, even of 
this, that there is a God. 

§ 167. A word as to the true history of the theory 
of transubstantiation may be added. The theory was 
doubtless not created, but it was first formulated and 
given a place in the theology of the Roman Church, 
by Paschasius Radbertus, who wrote his treatise on 
The Body and Blood of the Lord in the latter part "of 
the eighth century. Harnack says of it : ^ '' His great 

* Dogmengeschichte , vol. iii., p. 278. 



3i8 The Roman System, 

work upon the Lord's Supper is the first ecclesiasti- 
cal monograph on this subject. The contents are 
only partially described when they are reduced to 
the formula : Paschasius taught transubstantiation. 
Rather, the significance of the book lies in this, that 
the Lord's Supper is here treated from all possible 
points of view in an exhaustive fashion, and never- 
theless a unity is attained. Paschasius rendered to 
this dogma the service which Origen rendered to 
Christian doctrine in general. He is the Origen of the 
Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which is put 
by him theoretically in that central position Avhich it 
had long occupied in practice. One can estimate 
Peischasius' doctrine correctly only when he remem- 
bers that in it Greek Christological mysticism, Au- 
gustinian spiritualism, and — unconsciously to the au- 
thor himself — the church order of the Prankish 
monarchy have like part. But one must also re- 
member that the idea of God as an incomprehensible 
power was the controlling element. Without this 
idea the doctrine of transubstantiation could never 
have arisen." With this work the question was prac- 
tically settled for the Church. Still it was more than 
four centuries before the doctrine found its place in 
an authoritative symbol of the Church, and mean- 
time Gregory VII. had sheltered Berengar, who 
denied it, maintaining that it was enough if he de- 
clared, as he was willing to, that there was in the 
supper a '' conversion " of bread and wine into the 
body and blood of the Lord. It is historically a 
theory, invented in the scholastic period of the 
church dogma, to explain an idea which had gradu- 



The Sacrifice of the Mass. 319 

ally become controlling in the worship and the doc- 
trine of the Church, but which lacked adequate 
foundation, as the theory invented for it lacks con- 
ceivability and possibility. 

§ 168. And we may say, finally, that transubstan- 
tiation is not only inconceivable and impossible, but 
it is even unnecessary. The real presence, which it 
is designed to explain, is not called for. It belongs 
to that conception of the Church as a visible and 
/' objective " institution which we have found to be 
the prime fallacy of Rome. If Christ is to be with 
us in the sacrament, it is supposed that he must be 
with us apart from our personal condition and fit- 
ness ; apart also from the uncertainty which our un- 
certainty of our own fitness might throw about his 
real impartation of himself to us. Hence the objec- 
tive presence by transubstantiation of the bread and 
wine. But the whole conception is unscriptural ; the 
whole thing demanded unnecessary. We can know 
when we are fulfilHng the divine conditions, and can 
be certain when we have the divine favor. Rome 
makes this fundamental error; but once made, it fol- 
lows her, with dogged persistence, into every part of 
her system, introducing artificiality everywhere, and 
with it unscripturalness and unrealness. 

II. The Sacrifice of the Mass. 

§ 169. The Scriptural Argument. Perrone^ 
condenses this into the following form : '^ Christ in 
the supper, or in the institution of the eucharist, 
offered a true and proper sacrifice to God. Next, he 

^ Prcslectiones, vol. iii., p. 221 ff. 



320 The Roman System, 

commanded the very thing which he himself did to 
be done by the apostles and their successors in the 
priesthood, by these words, ' This do in remembrance 
of me.' Therefore in the mass there is offered an 
equally true and proper sacrifice to God." 

The force of this argument depends, as Perrone 
himself goes on immediately to say, upon the real 
presence of Christ in the eucharist. This he supposes 
himself to have already proved, and gives no further 
arguments in its support. We, in turn, might say that 
we have already refuted the whole argument by re- 
futing this premise, and need make no further reply. 
But whatever force there is for the Catholic position 
in arguments drawn from new texts we are bound to 
consider; and they will either help the Catholic 
cause or add to its refutation. 

The ''adjuncts" of the Last Supper are brought 
forward, then, as an argument for the truly sacrificial 
nature of the sacrament. The eucharist took the 
place of the paschal sacrifice. As that was a true 
sacrifice, so ought this to be. The only difference is 
that the sacrifice offered in the slaughter of the lamb 
was an absolute sacrifice, while the eucharist is a rel- 
ative sacrifice, having reference to the sacrifice soon 
to be offered upon the cross. But, certainly, the eu- 
charist does not take the place of the paschal sacrifice 
in any respect. It does not refer to the same thing, 
the passing-over of the Israelites upon the night of 
the final affliction of Egypt ; it is not a yearly sacri- 
fice ; it is not expressly or impliedly substituted for 
it ; and the cessation of the paschal sacrifice has no 
connection with the institution of the eucharist ex- 



The Sacrifice of the Mass. 321 

cept as the death of Christ upon the cross, of which 
the eucharist is the memorial, did away with all the 
sacrifices of the old law, the paschal as well as those 
of the day of atonement and every other, but the 
former no more and no otherwise than the latter. 
Hebrews ix. 17 is made the basis of this argument : 
Death and sacrifice are necessary to the formation of 
a covenant ; Christ founded a covenant by means of 
the eucharistic cup ; therefore that cup was a sacri- 
fice. But Christ did not found the covenant by means 
of the cup, but by his death upon the cross ; for in 
verses 23 and 26 below we read : " The heavenly 
things themselves \i. e., the prototype, the true cove- 
nant] must be cleansed with better sacrifices than 
these [viz., the blood of calves and goats]. For 
. . . now once at the end of the ages hath he been 
manifested to put away sin" — not by the eucharistic 
sacrifice, as the logic of Perrone's argument demands, 
but — ''by the sacrifice of himself !' Acts xiii. 2 is 
quoted : " As they ministered to the Lord; and 
fasted," '' ministering " being taken in the sense of 
sacrificing. Perrone even cites the Greek word Izi- 
Toupye7u, as a proof that " these things must be un- 
derstood of the offering of a sacrifice." But this word 
does not necessarily mean sacrificing, since it has the 
more general meaning of ministering. In Heb. x. 1 1 
it probably has the more general meaning, though it 
may mean exactly what the following word '' offer- 
ing '^ means, by the figure of speech called tautology. 
In the '' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " we have 
the passage (chap, xv.), "For they also serve {hczoup- 
yelv) you with the service of the prophets and teachers',' 
21 



322 The Roma7i System. 

which certainly was not sacrificing. It would there- 
fore require something definite in the context to show 
that " ministering " in Acts xiii. 2 referred to offering 
a sacrifice, and such definite thing there is not. 

Protestants are far from denying that the table of 
the Lord is sometimes compared with the altar of 
the heathen (i Cor. x. i8 ff.) or of the Jews (He- 
brews xiii. 10, where the word ''altar" is used); 
but such comparisons do not prove that the table is 
in every, or even in the principal, respect like those 
altars. What the sacrifice upon those altars is, is 
indicated in the context of the second of the last 
cited passages, where we read : *' Let us offer up a 
sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the 
fruit of lips which make confession to his name. 
But to do good and to couiiminicate forget not : for 
with such sacrifices God is well pleased." The word 
" altar," therefore, does not carry with it the idea of 
a " true " sacrifice. 

As for the quotations from the Old Testament 
(Gen. xiv. i8, and Mai. i. lo f), it is enough to say 
that no New Testament authority for their appli- 
cation to the eucharist can be produced, and that 
in lack of it they have no more pertinency to this 
argument than any other passages in which a verbal 
or formal similarity could be found. 

§ 170. We see, accordingly, that the proffered 
Scripture proof of the truly sacrificial nature of the 
eucharistic offering is incapable of sustaining the 
Roman position. But there is also something further 
to be said. The Scriptures are not merely not for this 
doctrine, but they are very positively against it. If 



Mass not a True Saanjice, 323 

there is one fundamental idea in the New Testament, 
it is that Christ came into the world to do a unique 
work. There is no prophet Hke him, no priest at 
all comparable with him. His work has reference to 
the whole race and to all ages. This is the general 
impression of the New Testament, and we should 
therefore expect without further evidence that there 
would be no repetition of this unique atoning work. 
But we are not left to this impression alone. There 
are in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in large num- 
ber, and with almost every form of emphasis, express 
statements that the sacrifice of Christ is not to be re- 
peated. Christ " through his own blood, entered in 
once for all into the holy place '' (ix. 12) ; *' Nor yet 
that he should offer himself often ; as the high priest 
entereth into the holy place year by year with blood 
not his own ; else must he often have suffered since the 
foundation of the zvorld : but now once at the end of 
the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin 
by the sacrifice of himself" (ix. 25, 26); " Christ . . . 
having been once offered to bear the sins of many, 
shall appear a second time" (ix. 28); "We have 
been sanctified through the offering of the body of 
Jesus Christ once for all'' (x. 10) ; '* He, when he had 
offered one sacrifice for sins forever^ sat down upon 
the right hand of God" (x. 12); ''By one offering 
hath he perfected forever them that are sanctified " 
(x. 14) ; " There is no more offejHng for sin " (x. 18). 
The Roman theologians have a variety of ways of 
explaining these passages, but they cannot evacuate 
the simple and plain result, that the sacrifice of 
Christ admits of no repetition. Indeed, many of 



324 The Roman System, 

their ways of explaining the matter convey a sub- 
stantial admission of its uniqueness. They say the 
sacrifice of Christ upon the cross and in the eucha- 
rist is one sacrifice. It is offered by Christ himself, 
and is the same sacrifice thus offered as upon Cal- 
vary. It has no atoning power or meritorious value 
as offered in the mass, except as it derives this from 
the cross. It is a memorial repetition of that. It 
is the individual application of that which was essen- 
tially general. And when all these explanations 
have been made, there seems to arise again that 
old ambiguity, which has so often surprised and 
perplexed us just as we were beginning to think 
we- understood what the Roman theology was, and 
we are thrown into doubt whether after all, the 
eucharist is a memorial, or a repetition of the sac- 
rifice of Calvary. If it is a memorial, Protestants 
have nothing to say against the Catholic idea that 
it is an individual application of a general sacrifice, 
etc., etc. But if it is a repetition, it cannot be the 
same as the sacrifice of the cross ; nor derive its 
merit from that sacrifice ; nor be merely the indi- 
vidual application of a general thing. The fact that 
the Roman Church has been obliged to defend the 
sacrificial character of the eucharist, upon which she 
bases the existence of a true priesthood in the 
Church, and hence, by parity of reasoning, even 
the power of absolution, by thus confounding it 
with a memorial, and blurring all the distinct lines 
by which its character as a sacrifice should be de- 
fined, proves as perhaps nothing else could, that the 
idea of a true sacrifice in the eucharist is untenable. 



Historical Argument, 325 

The fall of the doctrine that the eucharist is a true 
sacrifice carries with it the ruin of the doctrine of a 
true priesthood in the Church. The one decisive 
argument for the priesthood (as we have seen, § 51) 
is the existence of a true sacrifice. We find the 
argument invahd: the conclusion falls. Catholic 
theologians have often regarded the doctrine of the 
sacrifice and that of the priesthood as the two sides 
of the same thing rather than as separate doctrines 
dependent one upon the other, and so have often 
seemed to fall into the fallacy of the circle, proving 
the priesthood by the sacrifice and then the sacrifice 
by the priesthood. They are doubtless thus inti- 
mately connected, and are ahke unscriptural. Still, 
one of them has the logical priority, and the sacri- 
fice is properly this prior element. With the refu- 
tation of this, the other is also refuted. 

§ 171. The Historical Argument. Upon the par- 
ticulars of this as conducted by CathoHc theologians, 
it is not necessary to dwell. It differs in no essen- 
tial respect from the numerous other arguments of 
the kind w^e have already minutely reviewed. The 
earliest church writers are supposed to have agreed 
exactly with the latest, and the use in different 
epochs of similar terms is assumed to carry with it 
the proof of the possession of the same ideas. A 
great deal is made of the early liturgies without 
much examination of their date or consequent value. 
Perrone ^ also quotes largely from certain Protestant 
writers, and could today quote still more largely if 
he should think the ''Anglo-Catholic" school 

1 op. cit., vol. iii., p. 231 ff. 



326 The Roma7t System, 

worthy of his attention. But a proof of a doctrine 
of the cucharist as a sacrifice in the Roman sense 
among the earhest writers after the New Testament, 
apart from all influences from the legahsm of the 
Judaism and heathenism about them, and, conse- 
quently, an auxiliary proof of the legitimacy of the 
doctrine in the Christian system, a proof sustained 
by a discriminating, critical, and candid weighing of 
the early fathers, is not to be found in the Catholic 
systems. 

It may be worth while briefly to outline the true 
history of the idea of the eucharist as a sacrifice from 
the beginning. We shall see a complete change in 
the meaning attached to this word, and also the 
corrupting causes introducing it. We shall have 
thus not only a history but a refutation.^ 

In close connection with the passage from He- 
brews already cited (xiii. 15), the "Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles " styles the Lord's Supper the '' eu- 
charist," but evidently in the sense of *' thank offer- 
ing " (ix. i). The Epistle of Barnabas has the same 
idea, but approaches it from a different angle. This 
epistle is marked by its antagonism to everything 
Jewish, and thus it distinguished sharply between the 
ritual of the Jews, especially their sacrificial ritual, 
and the purer service of the Christian Church. God 
" has therefore abolished these things that the new 
law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the 
yoke of necessity, may not have a man-made obla- 
tion. . . . To us then he declares, ' A sacrifice pleas- 

1 I follow here largely Harnack, Dogmengesch., i., pp. 137, 173, 178, 
386-92, 522; ii., p. 426. 



The Sacrifice ImmateriaL 327 

ing unto God is a broken spirit/ " ^ Thus even in 
rejecting sacrifices from the Christian system, the 
idea of sacrifice has been nitroduced. It maintained 
the place it thus obtained, for it seemed self-evident 
that Christians must have some sort of an offering, 
but just what that offering should be was more un- 
certain. Thus Polycarp's burning body was desig- 
nated an ^'acceptable whole burnt offering made 
ready for God."^ But generally prayer was re- 
garded in an especial degree as the Christian offer- 
ing. Thus we read in Justin : " Now, that prayers 
and giving of thanks \vjyaptaxiai\ when offered by 
worthy men, are the 07ily pe7fect and well-pleasing 
sacrifices to God, I also say. For such alone Chris- 
tians have undertaken to offer, and in the remem- 
brance effected by their solid and Hquid food, where- 
by the suffering of the Son of God which he endured 
is brought to mind." ^ Clement of Alexandria, con- 
trasting the Christian sacrifices with the heathen in 
several respects, but always as something immaterial 
in antithesis to the material, says : '' We honor God 
in prayer, and thus we bring the best and holiest 
sacrifice with righteousness. . . . The altar then, that 
is with us here, the terrestrial one, is the congregation 
of those who devote themselves to prayers, having, 
as it were, one common voice and one mind. . . . 
The sacrifice of the CJiurcli is the word breathing as 
incense from holy souls, the sacrifice and the whole 
mind being at the same time unveiled to God."^ To 
these may be added Ptolemaeus the Heretic in his 
letter to Flora : " The Saviour prescribed to us to 

1 Ep., ii. 2 Mart., xiv. i. ^ Dial., 117. * Stromata, vii., 6. 



328 The Roman System, 

offer oblations \7:poa{popa{\ , but not those by sense- 
less beasts or these kinds of incense, but by spiritual 
praises and glories and thanksgivings \pjyai)taTiac\, 
and by gifts and good deeds toward our neighbors."^ 
Thus, especially, public prayer, offered in the congre- 
gation, was the " sacrifice '^ of the Christian worship, 
and the gifts brought to the church, from which the 
materials of the Lord's Supper were taken, and 
which were employed in part for the love feasts, and 
in part for the relief of the poor, were designated by 
the same term. This is the earliest and purest stage 
of this matter ; but soon the offering came to have a 
larger and larger place, was connected closely with 
the celebration of the Supper, which became more 
and more the great event of the public worship, and 
thus gradually, by a combination of Old Testament 
influences, tending to restore a sacrifice and a priest- 
hood, with Greek heathen influences, a total change 
was brought about in the Christian worship and in 
its underlying ideas. 

The Roman apology will seize upon the word 
vjyacnaiuL in the above given quotations as the suffi- 
cient proof of its assertions in respect to the primi- 
tive doctrine. The '^ eucharist " is the perfect sacri- 
fice, according to Justin, and the Catholic, identifying 
this word with his own usage of it, will say, '' The 
eucharist is the perfect sacrifice, for the eucharist is 
the body and blood of the Lord offered for a true 
sacrifice; and thus Justin teaches the doctrine of the 
universal Church, early as well as late.^' But this 
argument is totally unhistorical. We have rendered 

^ Quoted by Harnack, from Epiphanius xxxiii. 



Tertulltan, 329 

eby^fipiazta by the English '' giving of thanks," and 
this is the only proper rendering. In Justin's thought, 
the true offering was the giving of thanks ; the con- 
secration of the bread and drink so that it was no 
longer '^ common bread and common drink " was by 
'' giving, thanks," and hence he could say: ''This 
food is called among us the eucharist," ^ thus spirit- 
italiziiig the foody not materializing the phrase '' giv- 
ing of thanks," as the Roman interpretation would 
make it, and as the exigency of their argument 
demands. 

It was Tertullian who made the first great contribu- 
tion of ideas foreign to pure Christianity, and going to 
constitute the sacrificial system of the Church of the 
Middle Ages. He ascribes to such things as fast- 
ings, voluntary celibacy, and martyrdom, a propitia- 
tory effect upon God, thus first introducing the idea 
of a satisfaction, but not connecting it with the Lord's 
Supper. Cyprian enlarged this idea by making such 
offerings a satisfaction for sins committed after bap- 
tism, thus exalting almsgiving, etc., into the category 
of a means of grace. He also first gave utterance to 
a distinct theory of the priesthood of the clergy, and 
with this proper priesthood united a proper offering 
and made the connection with the eucharist. Christ 
offered himself a sacrifice to God, and has com- 
manded this to be repeated by his followers.^ This 
is the clearly expressed thought which Cyprian pre- 
sents. It is the Roman theory in outline. He does 
not express himself consistently, for he sometimes 

1 Apol., i., Ixvi. 

2 The whole of his doctrine substantially in Epist., Ixiii. [Ixii]. 



330 The Roman System, 

seems to make the '' commemoration " the same as 
the *' offering." But in this inconsistency the later 
Roman theology has followed him. From this point 
on, the progress is steady to the full development of 
the scholastic doctrine. In the East things took a 
slightly different turn. The doctrine of the incarna- 
tion was brought into connection with the Supper. 
Through consecration the elements became changed 
into, or taken up into, the body of Christ. But, as 
the whole tendency of the Alexandrian school, which 
finally became triumphant in the Greek Church, was 
toward a subhmation of the human in the divine, so 
the transformation of the bread and wine was sub- 
stantially a transformation into the divine nature of 
Christ. The conception of the sacrifice was substan- 
tially that of the West. 

** And yet," as Harnack says, " it is nothing but 
pure heathenism which is at work here." The infant 
Church, plunged into the midst of the corrupt world, 
surrounded by the ritual of heathen worship, was 
earlier led to error in ritual than in more purely 
intellectual directions. It was about the time of the 
developing idea of sacrifice, about the time of Au- 
gustine, that the Church came to the parting of the 
ways. Had she remained free from the State, and 
had the flood of barbarism from the North been 
rolled back, she might have recovered herself, and 
the jangling utterances which we have just rehearsed 
might have been succeeded by clearer and purer 
notes. But in the complications of state patronage, 
in the confusion and darkness succeeding the migra- 
tions of the German nations, and under the powerful 



Denial of the Cttp. 331 

influence of a developing ecclesiastical empire at 
Rome, the Western Church turned the wrong way, 
departed from the purity and simplicity of the gospel, 
and the fully-developed Roman system of priesthood 
and sacrifice was the result. It is a history of de- 
generation, of ''corruption," and not of legitimate 
and sound development. 

§ 172. The Denial of the Cup to the Laity. 
We may dispatch this topic more briefly. The 
Council of Trent erected the practice of denying the 
cup to the communicant into a " law " on the ground 
that communion in " either species is sufficient unto 
salvation,"^ and that, although ''the use of both 
kinds has, from the beginning of the Christian re- 
Hgion, not been infrequent," ^ the custom having been 
already widely changed, the Church thinks fit for 
just and weighty reasons (which, however, are not 
mentioned) to approve the custom of communicating 
under one kind. Thus the cup, except by special 
dispensation, sometimes granted to kings, sometimes 
to Protestant nations with a view to their conversion 
to the CathoHc Church, and conceivably to the whole 
Church, should there be a general demand for it,^ is 
withheld from all communicants except the officiating 
priest. 

The Roman Church does not teach that this denial 
of the cup to the laity is a necessity of faith or prac- 
tice, or that it has been the universal custom of the 
Church, although implying that it has been the gen- 
eral custom. The rise of the custom gave rise to 

1 Schaff, p. 171. 2 Ji)id,^ p. 173. 

3 An idea of Mohler's, Symbolik, p. 320. 



332 The Roma7t System. 

the subsequent law. Perrone ^ summarizes the rea- 
sons under the following heads : (i) The danger of 
spilling the blood, especially where there are many 
communicants. (2) The disgust which many feel at 
drinking from the same cup with others. (3) Diffi- 
culty of preserving the wine for the sick, especially 
in hot or cold countries. (4) Lack of wine in many 
places. (5) Natural repugnance many have to wine. 
(6) Voluntary abstinence of the faithful in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries. (7) The impudence of 
heretics who reproach the Church with having de- 
spised the institution of Christ. But the deeper rea- 
son, suggested by Hase,^ and more than shadowed 
forth by Liguori,'^ is the desire to glorify the priest- 
hood, as being alone competent to enjoy fully the 
mysteries of this sacrament. Mohler * hints rather 
broadly that the desire for the cup in Protestant 
churches is more a desire for the wine it contains 
than for the sacramental blood. He shows thereby 
surprising and apparently inexcusable ignorance of 
the very small amount of wine which each Protestant 
communicant receives. 

The reply of Protestants to this '^ law " of the 
Church is that it is unbiblical, unreasonable, and 
unhistorical. Our Lord himself at the last supper, 

'^Op. cit., iii., p. 195 ff. 2 Polef7iik, p. 438. 

3 From Littledale : " It is conceded as at least ' probable ' by many 
Roman theologians that there is a special grace conferred by the 
chalice, so that a layman is not to be blamed who desires the priest- 
hood in order that he may communicate in both kinds (Liguori, 
TheoL Mor., VI, iii. 227)." 

* Synibolik, p. 320 : " Der KathoUk freut sich dass er in seiner 

Mltte doch keine so fieischlichgesinnte Meiischen aiitrlfft, die im 

Abendmahl nicht das heilige Bliit, sondern Wein trinken wo lien." 



The Denial UnbiblicaL 333 

giving the cup to his disciples, said, according to the 
account of Matthew : " Drink all ye of it," which finds 
confirmation in the statement of Mark that " they all 
drank of it." Now, the apostles were communicants, 
not the officiating priest, and, according to the Roman 
custom, they should not have drunk of the cup ; but 
this was the command, as propriety arising from the 
consecration of two elements instead of one essen- 
tially demands. Perrone, it is true, explains the 
direction as meaning that no one was to drink the 
whole cup.^ It shows the exigency into which the 
Roman custom brings him ; but it will never be be- 
lieved that our Lord was thus trying to give his dis- 
ciples a lesson in good manners. What reason there 
is in the prohibition is derived exclusively from the 
theory of transubstantiation, and from the exceeding 
sacredness that is thereby attached to the elements 
which have become Christ himself But with the 
theory, the sacredness and the propriety of the prohi- 
bition disappear. Unhistorical is the law in a marked 
degree. For the first thousand years of her existence 
the Christian Church universally employed both the 
bread and wine in the sacrament. This is confessed 
by historical scholars of both sides of the contro- 
versy. When the cup was withdrawn, lest the blood 
of Christ might be spilled in the celebration, the 
scholastics invented the doctrine of concomitance, 
whereby the whole Christ is conceived as equally 
present in both elements, to furnish a dogmatic 
ground for this action. But Thomas Aquinas is 

1 1?i loc. cit., p. 207 : '' Ut intelllgerent ApostoU, non totum calicem, sed 
partem tantum ab unoquoque esse haurie?idam." 



334 ^^^ Roman System, 

confused upon it/ and the Council of Trent did not 
succeed in perfectly adjusting itself to it.^ If there 
were any force in this doctrine it would also prevent 
the tautology of the two forms in the original insti- 
tution of the Supper. Thus general Christian antiquity 
is against the withholding of the cup ; but papal an- 
tiquity is also against it, for the popes repeatedly 
have pronounced against it.^ Pope Leo I. declared 
that abstinence from the cup was a Manichaean 
heresy, and that *' men of this sort whose sacrilegious 
deceit has been detected are to be expelled by priestly 
authority from the fellowship of the saints." Gelasius 
I. (492-496) said that a similar class must " either 
receive the sacrament in its entirety or be repelled 
from the entire sacrament, because tlie division of one 
and the same mystery cannot take place ivithout great 
sacrilege!' The Council of Clermont, presided over 
by the crusading pope, Urban II., decreed that " No 
one shall communicate at the altar without he receive 
the body and blood separately and alike, unless by 
way of necessity and for caution." And Pope Pas- 
chal II. wrote : *' We know that the bread was given 
separately and the wine given separately by the Lord 
himself; which custom we therefore teach and com- 
mand to be always observed in holy church, save in 

"^ So it appears, on the whole, though he defined concomitance (iii., 
76, 2), for he ascribes a different office to each species, the salvation 
of the body to the Body, and of the soul to the Blood. See Littledale, 
p. 83, for fuller discussion. Cf. Thorn. Aq. Sumvta, iii., 74, i. 76, 2. 

79. I- 

^ The definition that the substance of the bread is converted into the 
substance of the body, and of the wine into that of the blood, is really 
inconsistent with concomitance. 

3 Following instances from Littledale, p. 85 ff. 



Protestant Ideal. 335 

the case of infants and of very infirm people, who 
cannot swallow bread!' Certainly, nothing could be 
more explicit and nothing more Protestant than these 
papal utterances. 

§ 173. The Protestant Ideal of the Lord's 
Supper. We began this chapter with a sketch of 
the Roman ideal underlying its doctrine of the eu- 
charist. Catholics often speak as if Protestants could 
have no religious experiences in connection with 
their churches, if in any portion of their life whatever. 
There are no " altars," and there is no '' presence " of 
Christ in their temples. But there is a Protestant 
ideal of the communion of the Lord's Supper, and, it 
may be, we cannot better close our chapter than by a 
brief account of it. 

Let the reader imagine himself assembled with a 
congregation of communicants in a Protestant church. 
I remember many such a scene in the New England 
church in which my youth w^as passed, of a Sunday 
afternoon. Unbelievers are not present. The hush of 
Sabbath stillness is over all the place. The disciples 
of Christ have gathered, mindful of his promise : 
** Where two or three are gathered in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them,^' and the bowed head, or 
here and there the meditative countenance, shows 
that the promise is receiving fulfillment. By and by 
the service begins. It has reference by hymn, by 
selections from the word of God, by prayer, to the 
original celebration of the Supper in the upper cham- 
ber with the disciples alone. The simple account of 
Matthew is strictly followed. The minister '' takes 
the bread," and asks God's '' blessing " upon it, and 



336 The Roman System, 

" breaks " it, and distributes it to all with the repeti- 
tion of the words of institution, '' Take, eat ; this is 
my body." And with similar minuteness and accu- 
racy he repeats with the cup exactly what the Master 
said upon that first occasion, just before he w^ent out 
to the agony of Gethsemane, to betrayal, and to 
death. It is all familiar to the communicant, for he 
has been before that table often; and, as it goes on, 
how there rises before his mind the whole scene, that 
group of Galilean peasants, now hushed in solemn 
awe ; the Master in their midst, with glowing face, 
already transfigured with the anticipation of the great 
sacrifice ; the tender discourse, " Let not your heart 
be troubled ;" the garden ; the trial ; the cross ; till, 
as it were, the death of his Master is vividly set forth 
before his very eyes ! By force of a holy imagina- 
tion, kindled and sustained by the simple but divine 
ceremony, the present Christ is brought very near 
to his soul. His heart is melted, he ponders on his 
own unworthiness, on his sins and disobedience, he 
is broken down in penitence and confession, and with 
the words of prayer at the table go up mingled his 
own secret cries of confession and supplication, and 
then of glad thanksgiving also for *' the unspeakable 
gift." And thus he hears the words with which the 
cup is communicated : " This is the cup of the new 
testament in my blood, which is shed for many, for 
the forgiveness of sins,'' and with the word of the 
minister he beholds the visible word given by Christ 
himself, and hears him say : " My son, just so surely 
as thou, being penitent, takest upon thy lips this ma- 
terial emblem of my cleansing blood, just so surely 



Protestant Ideal, 



zn 



art thou forgiven by my grace." Thus Christ is 
present to him, though not by transubstantiation in 
the material elements, and Christ's forgiveness is there, 
though not conveyed ex opere operato by the elements 
received. The soul, its faith stimulated and lifted by 
the ordained symbol of the passion of its Lord, has 
met spiritually the living Lord, and departs refreshed, 
for it has '' seen the Lord." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE REMAINING SACRAMENTS— ORDER, MATRIMONY, 
EXTREME UNCTION. 

§ 174. Order. The remaining sacraments may 
be dispatched with greater celerity. Of these, order 
is the first. We have ah'eady considered the priest- 
hood in all its essential aspects, and other, merely 
theoretical aspects have very little importance for 
our present purpose. Enough to say that order, or 
ordination, is reckoned among the seven sacraments 
of the Roman Church ; that it is said to confer an 
indelible '* character," by which is simply meant that 
once done it does not need to be repeated, and that 
its effects are permanent ; that, further, its " form " are 
the words employed in the consecration, " Receive 
the power of offering sacrifice to God and of cele- 
brating the mass both for the living and the dead ;" 
and that the grace conferred by it imparts the 
** power of order," that is, of preaching the word 
and administering the sacraments, and the ''power 
of jurisdiction," by which authority in the Church, 
and particularly the authority of the confessional, is 
bestowed. 

Whether the Roman ordination can confer the 
high prerogatives which it is said to convey will de- 
pend primarily upon the existence in the Church 
of the powers involved, especially that of sacrificing 
to God and of judicially forgiving sins. These ques- 

338 



Is Ordination a Sacrament? 339 

tions have been already considered under the heads 
of the sacraments of penance and the Lord's Supper, 
and the argument need not be repeated here. The 
supposed prerogatives cannot be conferred because 
they have no existence in fact in the Christian Church. 
But Protestant churches have forms of ordination 
which confer certain things upon those who receive 
them, viz., certain offices in the visible Church with 
certain definitely prescribed powers and duties. In 
such a sense Roman ordination may be held to effect 
something in the recipient. Has ordination, how- 
ever, any claim to be a '^ sacrament " ? It is very 
difficult to define it so as to bring it into connection 
with the other sacraments, even upon the Roman 
principles. The sacraments are " visible signs of an 
invisible grace ;" but where is the visible sign in ordi- 
nation ? If its form is the phrase employed by the 
consecrating bishop, what is the *' matter " corre- 
sponding to the water of baptism, or even the oil of 
extreme unction ? Roman authorities do not tell us, 
and it would be very difficult to find any such " mat- 
ter." The only substantial argument which can be 
urged in favor of the sacramental character of ordi- 
nation is that it confers, as is supposed, ex opere 
operato^ divine grace. Its sacramental character is 
supposed to be necessary to secure that priestly 
qualification in her ministers which Rome demands. 
Grant the qualifications, and it maybe a matter of no 
difficulty to regard the ceremony as sacramental. 
But with the refutation of the supposed qualifications 
the whole matter falls to the ground, and may now 
be dismissed. 



340 The Roinan System, 

§ 175. Matrimony. The points of con tact between 
the Protestant and CathoHc doctrines of marriage are 
more numerous than the points of disagreement. To 
both a marriage is normally the union for life of two 
persons of opposite sexes for the purpose of the 
propagation and education of the race and for the 
attainment of the highest possible individual develop- 
ment and efficiency. Catholic controversialists often 
reproach Protestantism for the reluctant consent 
which the Wittenberg Reformers gave to the bigamy 
of the Landgrave of Hesse, and imply that it is also 
responsible for such deviations from good principle 
and practice as Mormonism.^ But this is totally 
unjust. Protestantism repudiated the advice of Lu- 
ther and Melancthon as soon as it became known ; and, 
in the modern instance referred to, the pressure of the 
general public opinion and of legislative enactments 
upon the Mormons has been so great that, at last, 
this people, who originated in the lowest strata of 
American society, and were so violently repudiated 
by the communities in which they first settled that 
they fled across deserts to uninhabited and almost 
uninhabitable wilds to found an empire of their own, 
have solemnly renounced the practice of polygamy. 

The Catholic system adds to a recognition of the 
original divine institution of marriage the assertion 
that it was erected by Christ into a sacrament, for 
which is quoted the authority of the text, ^' Husbands, 
love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and 
delivered himself up for it. . . . This is a great sacra- 

1 Cardinal Gibbons does not here make this latter charge, though 
elsewhere implying it. See p. 166 above ; and see Perrone, iii,, p. 497. 



Is Marriage a Sacrament f 54 1 

ment, but I speak in Christ and in the Church " 
(Eph. V. 25, 32).^ The interpretation of this text, 
which depends on the rendering of the Greek given 
in the Vulgate, is manifestly wrong, for the Greek 
word [luarfjptov never has the meaning of the Eng- 
lish '' sacrament " in any other passage, and the 
context forbids the meaning here.^ It has been im- 
possible for CathoHc dogmaticians to settle upon a 
satisfactory statement of those elements which go to 
make up the supposed sacrament. The fundamental 
question, who the minister of the sacrament is, 
whether he is the priest, or the contracting parties 
themselves, is undecided. Hence the '' form " is 
either the benediction of the priest or the acceptance 
of one another by the contracting parties, and the 
*' matter " is either the contract or the *' corporum 
tradition ^ In neither case does the " matter," which 
ought to be something tangible, seem to be very 
well made out. This vacillation serves to show how 
uncertain is the foundation for the erection of mar- 
riage into a sacrament. But it has also one important 
practical result in its bearing upon the validity of 
Protestant marriages. If the priest is the necessary 
minister of the marriage, then Protestant marriages 
lack the " form," and are invalid. But if the con- 
tracting parties are themselves the ministers, then 
the truly sacramental union may take place without 

^ Council of Trent, in Schaff, ii., p. 194. 

2 Even the Vulgate is against the interpretation of '' sacr amentum" 
by the English " sacrament," for in every other place in the Old and 
New Testaments where it is used to translate ^vcrr-qpiov (Dan. ii. 18, 
iv. 9 ; Eph. i. 9, iii. 3,9;! Tim. iii. 16 ; Rev. i. 20), sacramentum means 
" mystery." 3 Perrone, vol. iii,, p. 490. 



34^ The Roman System. 

the priest, and Protestant marriages are as valid as 
any. The general tendency of Catholic theology is 
toward the recognition of Protestant marriages, and 
hence toward the theory that the contracting parties 
are the ministers of marriage. The analogy of hereti- 
cal baptism, which is accepted by the Roman Church 
as valid, favors this broader and more humane view. 
§ 176. Another point of difference between Catho- 
lics and Protestants lies in the subject of divorce. It 
may be that the sacramental nature ascribed to mar- 
riage has had an effect in determining the teaching 
of the Roman Church. Perrone rests the doctrine, 
in its rational aspect, upon the sacrament imparted 
in marriage.^ But, however this may be, the Roman 
Church teaches that a Christian marriage, once con- 
summated, is indissoluble, so far as the marriage 
bond is concerned, except by death. True, a mar- 
riage may be pronounced invalid from the beginning 
for various reasons, and may thus be terminated ; a 
marriage not consummated may be dissolved by 
either party taking the solemn vow of chastity and 
entering upon what is called a '' religious " life ; a 
legitimate marriage between heathen may be dissolved 
as to the bond by the conversion of either party, if 
the other is unwilling longer to live in the marriage 
relation ; there may be separation from bed and board 
for various reasons ; but the indissoluble character 
of marriage forbids, even in case of adultery, such a 
divorce as shall give the innocent party the right to 
enter upon a new marriage. 

1 Prcelectiones , larger edition, vol. ix., ^ 45, as quoted by Hase : " In- 
dissolubiliias unice pendet a sacramentoy 



Law of Divorce. 343 

The scriptural argument for this position in its 
strongest form rests the case upon those texts in the 
Gospels of Mark and Luke in which, without any 
exception, it is declared that '' Whosoever shall put 
away his wife, and marry another, committeth adul- 
tery against her." ^ '' Surely," says Cardinal Gib- 
bons, '' if the case of adultery authorized the aggrieved 
husband to marry another wife, those inspired pen- 
men would not have failed to mention that qualifying 
circumstance." That is, the Church puts herself 
squarely upon the ground of these texts and demands 
that the other texts. Matt. v. 32, xix. 9, which con- 
tain the exception, " saving for the cause of fornica- 
tion," shall be brought into consistency with the 
simpler and plainer ones in Mark and Luke. 

Some of the efforts to harmonize the teaching of 
the different gospels do not, however, commend 
themselves. Perrone makes the following proposi- 
tion : '' This little clause ['' saving for the cause of 
fornication "] ought to be referred, as many inter- 
preters contend, to the former part of Christ's dec- 
laration, viz., to the putting away of the wife, which 
ought not to be except for fornication, and then the 
sense of Christ's words in Matthew would be, ' Who- 
ever shall put away his wife for any other cause than 
adultery, and while she is alive, whether an adulteress 
or not, shall marry another, commits adultery ; ' and 
then the difficulty ceases." It is certainly necessary 
to put in something to get out this interpretation ; 
but is not this addition, which completely changes 
the sense of the passage, rather a large addition ? 

1 Mk. X. II, 12: Lk. xvi. i8. 



344 ^^^ Roman System, 

Might not the advocates of unHmited divorce feel 
themselves equally justified in putting in the words 
" does not " before ** commit adultery " ? 

But the attempted scriptural argument fails before 
the general principle that the circumstance that one 
evangelist did not record an exception, cannot dis- 
credit an exception recorded by another. The ex- 
ception is in the gospel narrative, and cannot be 
removed. A simple evangelical theology will admit 
the right of complete divorce for the guiltless party 
in case of adultery. 

While thus Protestantism has ever defended the 
right of the innocent party, when once the marriage 
has been *' broken " by adultery (which is called in 
one Teutonic language Elicbr7icli), to establish again 
by a new marriage the relation of which he has thus 
been robbed, it has never asserted it to be the duty 
of a married person to note thus every deviation of 
his companion from the right path. Nor has it 
uniformly acceded to the opinion of those who have 
maintained other grounds of divorce. The modern 
divorce system in the United States has against it, 
in all its breadth and laxity, the almost unanimous 
opposition of the Protestant Church. No one who 
possesses any moral principle, Christian or anti- 
Christian, can justify it except as Moses' arrange- 
ments were justified, as a concession of law to the 
" hardness of men's hearts." Most American Prot- 
estants would rather stand with Rome in all her 
strictness than justify for a moment the lax practice 
which prevails in many States of the country, and 
fills our courts, and even our daily newspapers, with 



Certain Lax Practices, 345 

the constant rehearsal of nauseating details of sin 
and crime. And yet Rome, by her unbiblical and 
excessive strictness, does much to promote the dis- 
order as well as to alienate multitudes of her own 
children from her fold. 

At one point, however, Rome is too lax ; and it is, 
as is so often the case, the point where the interests 
of the Church as an institution seem to be imme- 
diately involved. '' Matrimony legitimately con- 
tracted by unbelievers may be dissolved as respects 
the bond {(juoad vinculuni) if, when the one party has 
been converted to the faith, the other is unwilling to 
live with him peaceably, or will not consent to live 
without irreverence toward the Creator." So writes 
Perrone,^ referring to i Cor. vii. 10 ff. for authority. 
But the apostle gives no support to the idea that the 
separation he there speaks of was to be a divorce, 
with the right of remarriage. There is no evidence 
that anything more than a separation from bed and 
board is meant. The word '' bondage " of vs. 1 5 
does not indicate it, for doukoco cannot refer to the 
*' vincithcm!' In the face of Matt. v. 32 and parallels, 
nothing more than separation can be allowed by the 
apostle. But Rome judges differently, and has often 
acted with great mercilessness against parties in such 
a case. Hase ^ relates one instance which we may 
hope was never paralleled. A professedly Christian 
clerk in the house of a Jewish merchant in a city of 
the Papal States seduced his master's wife and fled 
with her and her children to the city of Bologna, 
where the woman and her children were baptized. 

^ op. cit., vol. iii., p. 503. ^ Poleinik, p. 451, 



346 The Roman System, 

The Jew demanded that his wife and children should 
be restored to him, but in vain. The cardinal and 
papal legate himself married the Jewess to her se- 
ducer, and the Jew was ordered by court to pay a 
fixed sum annually for the support of this Christian 
family. We could wish that the story might be dis- 
proved ; but all of it, with the exception of the last 
point, an extreme refinement of cruelty, is perfectly 
in accord with Roman ecclesiastical law. 

§ 177. The impediments to marriage arising from 
kinship (see Lev. xviii. 6-18) have been so greatly 
extended by the Roman Church as to include almost 
all of whatever degree of relationship. To these im- 
pediments there have been added the so-called spirit- 
ual impediments created by spiritual relationship, /. e., 
by the fiction that a relationship is established be- 
tween persons who act at baptism as godfathers and 
godmothers and those who are there born again, as 
if they were originally and naturally born of these 
persons. The impediment arising from this is of the 
same degree as that arising from natural relationship, 
and has sometimes been extended to include all the 
natural relatives of the spiritual relatives. Some- 
times it has become almost impossible to find any 
one in a small and isolated village with w^hom a good 
Catholic could wed. Ordination is also a bar to 
marriage, so that priests cannot contract it, or, being 
contracted, it is invalid. Inasmuch as priests often 
leave the Church, marry, and afterwards, in a fit of 
remorse or fear, return to their former obedience, 
this principle works great hardship to the forsaken 
wife and children. The hardship is the greater in 



Impediments. Mixed Marriages, 347 

that the Church declares all these marriages invali- 
dated by such ecclesiastical impediments, and thus to 
have been null and void from the beginning. Chil- 
dren of invalid marriages have, however, often been 
subsequently legitimated. 

But, evidently, such legislation is unwise and 
therefore unjust. The wider the limits within which 
marriage is possible, provided only those limits be 
observed w^hich dehcate feeling and sanitary con- 
siderations suggest, the better, since the opportunity 
to make a free and wise choice is enlarged. The 
Levitical rules are stringent enough. 

§ 178. The Catholic Church admits ''mixed mar- 
riages," or marriages between Catholics and non- 
Catholics, only with the greatest reluctance. It 
insists upon some condition, and, where possible, 
upon this, that the children shall be educated in the 
CathoHc faith. In different countries different pro- 
visions have been made by law regulating this mat- 
ter. In the United States everything must be left to 
the free consent of the parties, since the courts will 
enforce no ecclesiastical law upon such a subject. 
The natural result of the exclusive condition that all 
the children shall be educated in the Catholic faith, 
in the gradual catholicization of a divided nation, 
requires nothing but a passing mention, and is re- 
ceiving in many portions of Germany mournful illus- 
tration in our own day. 

§ 179. Extreme Unction. This sacrament, to be 
administered to the sick in view of immediately im- 
pending death, is the means by which the Christian 
is supposed to be defended in his last struggle with 



34^ The Roman System. 

the enemy of souls.^ It is deemed to have been 
instituted by Christ, as is intimated by Mark (vi. "i 3), 
but was recommended and promulgated by James 
(v. 14, 15). The '' matter "is the oil; the *^ form," 
the words : '' God be merciful to thee " {Indiilgcat 
tibi Dais). The effect of the sacrament is the im- 
partation of the grace of the Holy Spirit which 
** cleanses away sins, if there be still any to be ex- 
piated, as also the remains of sins," ^ and strengthens 
the soul of the sick person, sometimes also raising 
him to bodily health. 

To the practice of extreme unction as a pious 
ceremony Protestantism has little to object, except 
that the propriety of it, when the Lord's Supper is 
so naturally, as well as historically, the sacrament 
of the dying, may be called in question. But to its 
exaltation to the rank of a sacrament the objection 
is decided. It utterly lacks authority as a sacrament 
of Christianity. The passage Mark vi. 13 does not 
prove it such, nor does it even *' insinuate," to use 
the word of the Council of Trent, the sacramental 
character of the observance. Even Bellarmine con- 
fessed as much. Nor does the passage in James, 
which properly refers to the exercise of the miracu- 
lous gifts of the early Church, prescribe a universal 
and permanent sacrament. Without any adequate 
biblical support, and without Christian antiquity in 
its favor, Protestants set it aside as unwarranted in 
the Christian Church. 

1 Council of Trent, Schaff, p. 159 ff. 2 Jbid., p. 161. 



CHAPTER IX. 
CONCLUSION. 

§ 1 80. The Roman Catholic Church presents to the 
inquirer, as we have now fully seen, an imposing sys- 
tem. He seeks salvation, and first she offers him a 
refuge, a visible fold of Christ, a church, out of 
which there is no salvation, but within which the 
faithful believer, who intrusts himself obediently to 
her guidance, has assured to him his own personal 
salvation. She makes these promises because she 
is, as she claims, the one, holy, CathoHc, and apos- 
tolic Church, founded originally by Christ, put at the 
beginning under the guidance and government of 
the apostles, with Peter at their head, and supplied 
with every needed grace, but especially with the 
supreme and exclusive authority to teach men the 
way of salvation. Since Peter was himself made 
infallible in the official exercise of his authority as 
apostolic teacher, and since he has handed down 
this authority to his successors, the bishops of Rome, 
they now possess in his place this infallible authority 
of the Church. Through its exercise from genera- 
tion to generation the Church has come to possess a 
large body of articulated and definite truth from 
which the inquiring soul can draw instruction ; and 
in our own day, for present needs, the Church can 
come forward, as Pius IX. did in 1854, and authori- 
tatively define doctrine. Thus the Church is able to 

349 



350 The Roinan System, 

solve the always recurring doubts and difificulties of 
the ages and give the troubled soul perfect security. 

But this infallible teaching is conveyed through a 
regular and sufficient channel, and accompanied with 
every other grace needed for the best guidance of 
man upon his journey through this painful and dan- 
gerous world. The priesthood in its various ranks 
and degrees is this channel. It is a real priesthood, 
with a sacrifice to offer, possessed of irrevocable 
powers, and able, by the exercise of its peculiar pre- 
rogatives, to confer blessings which no man can truly 
estimate, with the certainty with which the words 
spoken in the holy rites, or the elements employed 
in the sacramental functions, are perceived by the 
outward senses. This priesthood is divided into 
ranks for the more perfect performance of its func- 
tions. Every obscure village may have its parish 
priest, who can render all the ordinary services re- 
quired from the cradle to the grave. Bishops guide 
these priests with larger knowledge and more ample 
authority. Archbishops stand above bishops, and 
over all is the bishop of Rome, who, as universal 
father, presides over the spiritual affairs of the whole 
world, and provides that everywhere the same truth 
shall be taught, after the same manner, by qualified 
persons. Thus the Church arranges at every point 
for the perfect performance of her functions by one 
united, consistent, and efficient government. 

In the performance of all her offices for the soul 
the Church begins at birth. She takes the new- 
born infant and baptizes it, and thereby she washes 
away the guilt of original sin and puts the child in 



The Offices of the Church. 351 

a state of grace. In due time the child comes to the 
age of confirmation, when it is received into the 
visible fold of Christ, and confirming grace is be- 
stowed upon it. As it sins, it has the confessional, 
where the causes of its error may be sought out, 
wise counsel given, corrective discipline imposed, 
and where it may receive, from God himself, by the 
mouth of his appointed and accredited servants, the 
forgiveness of all sins. The w^orship of the sanc- 
tuary brings before the adoring gaze the present 
Lord under the forms of bread and wine ; and com- 
munion nourishes both soul and body unto eternal 
life. If the youth seeks the higher service of the 
priesthood, he will receive in due time, in the sacra- 
ment of order, an indelible character of special and 
miracle-working grace. If he follows the ordinary 
path of men he will have sacramental grace in mar- 
riage. And at the end of life he will be sent on his 
last journey with the holy unction, which will be his 
defense in the final struggle, and will usher him into 
the closing stage of his discipHne and preparation for 
the joys of heaven. In all this process the Church 
surrounds him with a multitude of saints and angels 
who minister to him in various ways. Besides the 
hierarchy of the Church, she has her numerous 
orders of holy men and women. At her shrines 
miracles are frequently performed, and prayers before 
her altars may procure innumerable benefits. Nay, 
her care reaches even beyond the grave, and, if she 
teaches a doctrine of purification by purgatorial fires 
in the intermediate state, she also teaches that the 
prayers of men upon earth, and especially the offer- 



352 The Ro7nan System. 

ing of the divine sacrifice in the mass, may avail to 
abridge purgatorial sufferings, and she readily offers 
her services to this end. 

§ i8i. Such are the imposing claims of Rome. But 
when the inquirer asks for her proofs he finds him- 
self immediately lost in a maze of bad and irrelevant 
reasoning. Rome claims that the visible Church is 
identical with the true Church, and that she is that 
visible Church. But she cannot prove this without 
proving her authority in matters of faith, for other- 
wise the claim of Protestants to be members of the 
Church of God cannot be denied. And when she 
comes to prove her authority she presupposes her 
visibility, including the authority of Peter in the 
Church, and thus builds her wall upon its capstone 
for a foundation (§§ 5 and 18). Now, the authority 
of the Church resides in the priesthood, and hence 
to maintain that authority which Rome claims, it 
must be proved that there is a priesthood. This 
proof Rome rests upon the existence in the Church 
of a real sacrifice requiring a priesthood. But the 
sacrifice rests not upon the Scripture, but upon inter- 
pretations of Scripture which have nothing for them 
but the authority of the Church. So that, here 
again, authority is built upon authority (§§ 49, 51, 
161, 169). Even when the appeal is made nomi- 
nally to Christian history for proof, the argument 
turns out finally to be the old one, for the history 
does not prove the points claimed unless it be itself 
first interpreted by an infallible authority. The his- 
torical method of Catholic apology is well nigh 
invariably to assume that the present system of the 



Authority Rests upon Authority. 353 

Church, including the point which is at the moment 
under discussion, is the ordering of God and the 
position of the Church from the first. Every indica- 
tion in the past which bears upon the point, and 
many which do not, are interpreted into some sort 
of consistency with this authoritative present. The 
authority for the interpretation is that for the present, 
and the authority for the present is therefore used to 
prove the present for which authority is sought 
(§ 33)- I^ id^oXy at every point we are ultimately 
called upon to accept Rome's teachings simply upon 
her own positive affirmation. If it is the immaculate 
conception of Mary, the infallible. teaching powder of 
the Church is called in to tell us what the Scriptures 
and history mean (§§ no and 113). The doctrine 
of the opus operatum is a doctrine flowing immediately 
from the visibility of the Church, and therefore de- 
pendent, as that is, upon authority for its support 
(§§ 119 and 126). 

§ 182. The proof of the Roman system, therefore, 
fails. But the method of proof has brought it into many 
artificialities and inconsistencies with itself, which are 
a further and strong argument against it. The opus 
operatum, interpreting the objectivity of grace in such 
a way as to render it independent of the spiritual 
condition of the recipient, and especially of his faith, 
makes all religion external and artificial. No won- 
der, then, that an external and artificial repentance 
for sin is admitted as sufficient for absolution (§§ 126 
and 140), and thus the way prepared for a depoten- 
tiation of the Christian system. Hence the incon- 
sistencies. The Church is the visible Roman Church, 

23 



354 '^^^ Roman System. 

and therefore there is no salvation outside her pale ; 
but all '' invincibly ignorant," and hence almost all 
Protestants, may be saved (§ 48). The subject of 
sacerdotal celibacy, and the Church's view of woman, 
are encompassed with inconsistencies (§ 63). The sac- 
raments are objective, and yet something subjective is 
so demanded by Christian feeling that it is sometimes 
admitted (§ 120). Purgatory is a "blessing," and 
yet how many contrivances to avoid it (§ 148). 
Sins cannot be forgiven for prayer alone, and yet the 
penance may be a prayer (§ 151). 

Out of all this springs the observed tendency to 
depotentiate the system of the gospel. It is such 
a depotentiation w^hen the Roman Church teaches 
that a man cannot gain spiritual access to God except 
through the outward Church (§ 6). Again, when 
the condition of forgiveness is reduced by gradual 
steps till it amounts finally to little more than readi- 
ness to confess, not only are the high demands of 
the truth of God forgotten, but a positive bar is 
erected, by the encouragement of an unspiritual 
frame, to the entrance of forgiving grace into the 
heart (§ 93). And it is no wonder if all this results 
in views of God and heaven which are utterly false 

(§ 140). 

§ 183. How absolutely different the Protestant sys- 
tem of doctrine and life ! It comes to the inquirer 
with the original and simple religion of Jesus Christ. 
It takes his own words, illustrated and explained by 
the letters of his earliest disciples, and .it asks accept- 
ance only for the fundamental truths there revealed. 
It calls the guilty soul to repentance and submission. 



The Way of Salvation, 355 

It asks for his whole heart, and when he has com- 
pletely surrendered himself to God it brings to him 
the promises of Christ, and he finds forgiveness min- 
istered to him by the Holy Spirit. He enters into 
personal communion with God through the Spirit. 
This gives him the certainty of forgiveness, which gives 
him the reality of spiritual truth. The Spirit also wit- 
nesses to him of the truth and divinity of the written 
word. He begins to draw his religious guidance 
directly from the original oracles of God, and he 
grows thereby. He is encouraged by apostolic ex- 
ample and precept to seek direct access to God in 
prayer. He relies upon the one Mediator between 
God and man, the man Christ Jesus. The one and 
perfect sacrifice of the divine Redeemer is enough. 
The elaborate machinery of the Church is not neces- 
sary for his salvation or his edification. In the sim- 
ple sacraments of baptism, by which he professes his 
faith and receives the divine confirmation of the new 
birth, and of the Lord's Supper, in which is pledged 
and witnessed to him, being penitent, the forgiveness 
of his sins, he finds enough of outward and objective 
establishment in his course. And when he comes 
to die, though he may seek the friendly help of those 
experienced in spiritual things, he commends his 
soul directly to his faithful Redeemer, and hopes for 
salvation through him alone. 

§ 184. The Roman Catholic Church is a great 
organization for doing in an external way what is 
essentially an inward work within the believing soul. 
The Protestant objection to it may be condensed into 
these few words : The machinery of the Church is 



356 The Roman System, 

unnecessary, unwarranted, and injurious. It is un- 
necessary because the ends which it seeks can be 
best obtained without its help. It is unwarranted 
either by Scripture, reason, or antiquity. And it is 
injurious, because it is unnecessary, and because it 
has drawn to itself so many questionable practices 
that it is a positive hindrance to the attainment by 
the soul of spiritual relations with God, the Father. 

As one once said of another hierarchical system, 
originally of direct divine prescription, but become 
in the course of time an obstacle to the progress 
of the truth, so may Protestants say of the Roman 
Church from whose communion they have come 
forth : *' So we also, when we were children, were 
held in bondage under the rudiments of the world : 
but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth 
his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that 
he might redeem them which were under the law, 
that we might receive the adoption of sons." Free- 
dom by Christ in the Spirit, — that is Protestantism. 



INDEX. 



Accidents and substance, 316. 

Agreement of Romanism and 
Protestantism, i ; of Protestants 
with one another, 164. 

Allegory, use of, in defense of the 
immaculate conception, 218 ; 
perpetual virginity of Mary, 222. 

Allocution of Dec. 17, 1847, 79; 
of Dec. 9, 1854, 83. 

Altar, argument from, for true sac- 
rifice in the Mass, 322. 

Ambiguity of the Roman system, 
as to necessity of the Church, 
86 ; the nature of the sacrifice 
of the Mass, 324. 

Anselm of Canterbury, on infinite 
sin, 185 ; immaculate concep- 
tion, 228. 

" Apostleship of Prayer" and in- 
dulgences, 288. 

Aquinas against the immaculate 
conception, 228 ; on sacraments, 
238 ; on theory of transubstan- 
tiation, 315 ; on concomitance, 

334- 

Aristides against oral confession, 
267. 

Artificiality of the Roman view of 
grace, 187; of penitence and 
confession, 270; transubstantia- 
tion, 319. 

Assurance, Protestant doctrine of, 
181. 

Athanisius, on the action of Dio- 
nysius of Rome, 125 ; and Julius 
I., 127. 

Attributes of the Church, 3 ; visi- 
bility, 4; apostolicity, 11 ; cathol- 
icity, 16 ; holiness, 19 ; unity, 22. 

Attrition, 189; defined, 256; the 
distinction involves a lowering 
of the gospel, 268. 

Augustine, " Roma loctita est," etc., 



65 ; on a universal priesthood, 
97 ; purgatory, 281. 
Authority of the Church, 29; 
centers in its infallibility (which 
see) ; source of authority within 
the Church, chapter on, 148 ; 
tradition, 149 ; ideal of tradition, 
149; Protestant reply, 152; the 
Scriptures, 154; their inspiration, 
154; Scriptures and Church, 
155 ; Church and proof of Scrip- 
tures, 156; interpretation, 158; 
perspicuity, 159 ; the Vulgate, 
159 ; prohibition of the Bible, 
161; Cardinal Gibbons on Church 
and Bible, 162 ; agreement of 
Protestants, 164. 

Baluze, Etienne, his corrections of 
text of Cyprian, 60. 

Barnabas, epistle of, silent on au- 
ricular confession, 267; on sac- 
rifice, 326. 

Basil, appeal to Damasus, 129. 

Baptism, chapter on, 249 ; defini- 
tions, 249; "character," 250; 
heretical baptism, 250; objec- 
tions, 251. 

Bellarmine, definition of the 
Church, 3 ; on the Honorius 
letters, 71 ; on resistance to the 
pope, 120; on spurious texts, 
160; on faith, 179; faith and the 
sacraments, 239 ; on uncertainty 
as to sacraments, 248 ; purga- 
torial fire literal, 276 ; extreme 
unction, 348. 

Bernard of Clairvaux against the 
immaculate conception, 228. 

Bible, prohibition of, 161 ; Cardi- 
nal Gibbons upon, 162. 

Biel, Gabriel, on the opus operaium, 
238. 

357 



358 



Index. 



Bigamy of the Landgrave, 340. 
Bulls, papal, cited : Unam Sanctam, 

76, 142 ; Pastor ^ternus, jj ; 

In Cce7ia Doinini, 79, 84 ; Uni- 

gettitics, 286. 

Cajetan, prayers to the saints, 205. 

Canonization, definition, distinc- 
tions, theory, 208 ; objection- 
ableness of, 209. 

Catholic Dictionary, by Thomas 
Arnold, cited, on the Church, 
3, 7, 10; on Meyer, 46; anathe- 
ma, 78; "character," 250; pur- 
gatory, 275, 276, 283 ; indul- 
gences, 284; confessional, 289. 

Catechism, Roman, v. ; good and 
bad in the Church, 4; apostoli- 
city, II ; holiness of the Church, 
19 ; one governor of the Church, 
22; catholicity of the Church, 
79 ; twofold priesthood, 91 ; the 
Virgin Mary, 211 ; baptism, 249; 
confirmation, 253 ; bad exegesis, 
260; contrition, 268 ; purgatory, 
275 ; Lord's Supper, 294, 296. 

Celestine, appeal to, 131. 

Celibacy of the clergy, 104; Prot- 
estant ideal of clerical marriage, 
107, no; of the nun, 193. 

Certainty, Protestant, in religion, 

73- 

Character, indelible, defined, 250. 

Chemistry and transubstantiation, 
316. 

Chrysostom, appeal to Rome, 130. 

Church, I ; definition, 3 ; visibil- 
ity, 4; notes, 11; apostolicity, 
II ; catholicity, 16; holiness, 19; 
unity, 22 ; authority (which see), 
29; necessity (which see), 75; 
and State, 140 ; source of au- 
thority (see " Authority "), 148. 

Clement of Alexandria, purifying 
fire, 281 ; altar and sacrifice, 

327. 

Clement of Rome, on Peter, 14; 
hierarchy, loi ; authority exer- 
cised by, 122; confession, 266; 
no purgatory, 280 ; no real pres- 
ence, 308. 

Clement VL, in Bull Unigenitus, 
on treasure of merits, 286. 

Clermont, council of, against de- 
nial of cup, 334. 



Concomitance, definition, 294, 
295 ; origin of the doctrine, 

333- 

Confession, defined, 257 ; confes- 
sional and immorality, 289 ; true 
argument for, 290. 

Constance, council of, and episco- 
pal theory, 115. 

Confirmation, 253. 

Constantinople as an apostolic see, 

134- 

Contrition, 189 ; and penance, 256, 
264, 269. 

Corruption, doctrinal, examples: 
doctrine of Mary, 235 ; of pur- 
gatory, 281 ; of sacrifice, 330. 

Councils, supremacy of, 116; de- 
cision by, 118. 

Coxe, Bishop A. C, interpretation 
of Irenaeus iii., 3, 50; of Justin, 
Apol. L, 6, 226. 

Cup, denial of the, 331. 

Curial system, development of, 
115; chief points, 119. 

Cyprian, quoted in behalf of in- 
fallibility, 58 ff; idea of the epis- 
copate, 62 f ; summary of his 
position as to Peter, 63 ; cited 
for the priesthood, 96 ; on " er- 
ror " of the pope, 126; purga- 
tory, 281 ; sacrifice and priest- 
hood, 329. 

Cyril and the papacy, 131. 

Damasus and Basil, 129. 

Delitzsch, Joh., v. ; text of Unam 
Sanctam, 76 ; of Pastor ^ternus, 
78 ; In Cozna Domini, 79 ; allo- 
cutions, 79, 83 ; of Martin on 
invincible ignorance, 84; of 
Weissenbach on priesthood, 97 ; 
of Pallavicini, 108 ; on the curial 
system, 115 ; Unam Sanctam 
cathedratic, 143 ; Kilber's argu- 
ment, 151 ; prohibition of the 
Bible, 160. 

Depotentiation of Christian ideas, 
presence of the Spirit, 10 ; state 
of grace, 188, 270; repentance, 
189 ; love and good works, 189 ; 
reconciliation with God, 270. 

Development of doctrine. Cardinal 
Newman's criteria of, 233 ; the 
criteria restated, 235. 

Dionysius of Corinth, of Peter, 14. 



Index. 



359 



Dionysius of Rome, and the pa- 
pacy, 125. 
Divorce, 342. 

Easter controversy, 123. 

Edwards, Jonathan, effects of the 
fall, 172 ; infinity of sin, 185. 

Episcopal theory of the papacy, 
115; inconsistent with the Ro- 
man system, 116. 

Episcopate, 98 ; not in the New 
Testament, 99 ; rise of, 103. 

Eusebius, on Peter at Rome, 13 ; 
on the Easter controversy, 124. 

Ex cathedra, definition, 30, 32 ; 
cases of: Honorius' letter, 69; 
Bull Unam Sanctam, jj, 143 ; 
allocution of 1854, 84; Council 
of Constance, 116; Alexander 
VIII., 241. 

Exegesis, Protestant, criticised by 
Cardinal Gibbons, 164 ; errors 
of Catholic, 143, 144, 218 f., 260. 

Fairchild, President J. H., on faith, 
178. 

Faith, Roman errors as to, 177; 
true meaning of saving faith, 
178 ; necessary connection with 
works, 185 ; in receiving the sac- 
raments, 245. 

Fallacies in Roman methods of 
proof: reasoning in a circle, 8, 
31 note, 43, 118, 225; begging 
the question, 28, 56 ff., 125, 151, 
308 ; ambiguity, 86 ; exegetical, 
143, 144, 260; from improper 
use of allegory, 218 f. 

Fessler, Bishop, on cathedratic 
character of bull Unam Sanctam, 

77, 143- 

Firmilian of Caesarea on suprem- 
acy of the pope, 126. 

Form in sacraments, 240 ; baptism, 
249; confirmation, 253; penance, 
256 ; Lord's Supper. 294 ; order, 
338 ; matrimony, 341 ; extreme 
unction, 348. 

Gelasius I. against denial of the 

Clip, 334. 
Gerson, Gallicanism, 116. 
Gibbons, Cardinal, iv. ; definition 

of Church, 3; apostolicity, 11; 

catholicity, 17 ; holiness of the 



Church, 19 ; charges against the 
Reformers, 20 ; unity of the 
Church, 22; infallibility, 34 ff. ; 
infallible Bible, 44 ; personal in- 
dependence, 46; private judg- 
ment, 48 ; on disproof of infalli- 
bility, 71 ; celibacy, 105 ; value 
of celibacy, 108 ; transmission 
of papal powers, 114; suprem- 
acy of the pope, 121 ; temporal 
power, 141 ; toleration, 145 ; 
Bible, 161, 162; fallacies as to 
the Bible, 162 ff. ; Protestant ex- 
egesis, 164; Mormonism, 166, 
340 ; worship of saints, 201 ; im- 
maculate conception, 213, 216; 
perpetual virginity of Mary, 220 ; 
definition of sacraments, 237 ; 
confessional, 257, 259, 265 ; pur- 
gatory, 280; indulgences, 284; 
Mass, 296 ; real presence, 305 ; 
divorce, 343. 

Gieseler, Church History, on Iren- 

seus iii., 3, 51; Gregory I., 55; 

■ Honorius, 67; Unam Sanctam, 

jj, 144; In Coena Domini, 79; 

Julius I., 128. 

Gnosticism, influence in Roman 
doctrine, 221. 

Gregory I., founds the Roman 
primacy on Paul, 16 ; the papacy, 
137. 138; purgatory, 281. 

Gregory VII., and transubstantia- 
tion, 318. 

Gury, Moral Theology, 290. 

Harnack, on "subterranean" 
Christianity, 227; on the doc- 
trine of the Virgin, 228; text of 
Unigenitus, 286; early view of 
the Lord's Supper, 312; on Pas- 
chasius Radbertus, 317 ; history 
of the Mass, 326. 

Hase, iii; quotations from Bel- 
larmine, 4; Gregory on the pri- 
macy of Paul, 16; translation 
of Irenaeus iii., 3, 50; quota- 
tion from Luther, 95 ; Innocent 
III. on subjection to the Church, 
116; the Bible, 160; canoniza- 
tion, 209; quotation from Biel, 
238; on "intention," 240; pur- 
gatory, 275; real presence, 309, 
311; Aquinas on transubstantia- 
tion, 315; Perrone on transub- 



36o 



Index, 



stantiation, 316; denial of the 
cup, 332; indissolubility of mar- 
riage, 342; dissolution of mar- 
riage, 345. 

Hatch, Dr. Edwin, upon the epis- 
copate, 103. 

Hecker, Father I. T., "dead 
book," 10; need of guidance, 
36; Protestantism excludes 
authority in religion, 46; ex- 
cludes faith also, 177, 

Heinrich, iv. ; visibility of the 
Church, 5; Protestants and 
native races, 18; Gallicanism 
rejected by the Vatican council, 
31; on infallibility, 32 ff; pri- 
macy of Peter, 42; argument 
for necessity of an authoritative 
interpretation of Scripture, 43; 
proof of infallibility, 49 ff; 
methods criticized, 55; refusal 
to submit tlie question to his- 
tory, 57; Fathers quoted, 58; 
fails to understand Honorius, 
71 ; tradition identified with 
Church teaching, 152; doctrine 
of the Scriptures, 154 ff; Mary 
represents the church, 214; im- 
maculate conception, 217. 

Heraclius, Roman emperor, 66. 

Heresy, formal and material, defi- 
nition, 83; Protestant f^iith not 
heresy, 85. 

Hergenrother, Cardinal, on cathe- 
dratic character of Unam Sanc- 
tam, 143. 

Hierarchy, chapter on the, 88; 
Mohler's argument, 88; defini- 
tion, 90; four parts of the doc- 
trine, 91 ; no true priesthood in 
the Church, 93; ordination, 95; 
history, 96; the episcopate, 98; 
celibacy, 104; reasons for its 
maintenance, 108; Protestant 
ideal of the pastorate, no; in- 
consistencies, 112. 

History, historical proof, Roman 
use of, 12 ff; methods of, 55, 
308, 329. 

Holiness of the Church defined, 
19, 21. 

Honorius, case of, 66 ff ; letter to 
Sergius, 68; a heretic, 69; made 
a cathedratic decision, 70 ; apolo- 
gies for, 71. 



Huss, his martyrdom a judicial 
murder, 26. 

Ignatius does not prove that Peter 
was at Rome, 14 ; not for original 
episcopate, 102; no purgatory, 
280; against real presence, 308. 

Ignorant, the invincibly, who? 84. 

Immaculate conception of the 
Virgin Mary, 212. 

Inconsistency of the Roman sys- 
tem, as to necessity of the 
Church, 86; as to celibacy, 112; 
as to certainty given by the 
Church, 247; as to confession, 
265; as to purgatory, 283. 

Indulgences defined, 284; theory, 
284 ff; approximation to Prot- 
estantism, 286; practical rela- 
tions, 287. 

Infallibility, definition, 29; not 
personal to the pope, 31; not 
in matters of jurisdiction, 31; 
confined to cathedratic decisions 
in matters of faith and morals, 
31; not omniscience, but like 
biblical inspiration, 32; depends 
on the design of the pope, 33; 
compared to the functions of the 
chief justice, 34; attractiveness 
of the idea, 36; refuted, 39 fif; 
not necessary, 43, 44; Irenaeus, 
iii. 3, 50; Tertullian, De Praesc. 
xxxvi., 53; Cyprian, 58; infalli- 
bility unknown to antiquity, 65; 
in the Middle Ages, 64; case of 
Honorius, 66 ff; summary of 
the argument against, 72; doc- 
trine of Mary, 225. 

Innocent I. and the papacy, 139. 

Innocent III. and the inquisition, 
292. 

Inquisition, history its condemna- 
tion, 291. 

Intention, in the sacraments, 240; 
Protestant objections, 246. 

Irenaeus, the passage iii. 3, 15,50; 
on universal priesthood, 96; real 
presence, 309. 

Jesuits, history of, 196; character- 
istics, 197; successes, 197; ex- 
pulsion, 198; dissolution and 
restoration, 198; influence, 198. 

Julius I., his privileges, 127. 



Index. 



361 



Justification, chapter on, 169; 
Luther's position, 169; Roman 
definition, 170; original state of 
man, 171; process of justifica- 
tion according to Mohler, 173; 
criticisms, 175; true meaning of 
justification, 176; not a process, 
176 ; faith, 177 ; Semi- Pelagian 
errors, 181 ; good works, 183 ; 
purgatory, 183 ; minimizing of 
Christian ideas, 189. 

Justin Martyr, on the priesthood, 
96 ; worship of angels, 226 ; real 
presence, 309 ; eucharist, 327. 

Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis, 
quoted on Matt. xvi. 18, 40. 

Lateran council on yearly confes- 
sion, 267. 

Lea, Henry C, on sacerdotal celi- 
bacy, 108. 

AetToupyetv employed to prove a 
true sacrifice in the Mass, 321. 

Leo L, and Theodoret, 131 ; and 
the papacy, 136, 138 ; against 
the denial of the cup, 334. 

Leo Xin. conducts the Church 
without the temporalities, 142. 

Littledale, v. ; Abp. Kenrick, 40 ; 
no infallible interpreter in the 
Old Testament system, 43 ; ac- 
cess to infallibility, 45 ; Bishop 
Fessler, 'jj, 143 ; saint worship, 
205, 206; Bellarmine, 248; 
abuses of purgatory, 283. 

Lord's Supper, chapter on, 293 ; 
definitions, 293 ; ideal, 296 ; real 
presence, 299 ; transubstantia- 
tion, 313 ; sacrifice of the Mass, 
319; denial of the cup, 331; 
Protestant ideal, 335. 

Luthardt, Prof. C. E., definition 
of saving faith, 179. 

Luther, not licentious, 20; mar- 
riage, 21 ; separation from 
Rome, 26 ; approach to the 
doctrine of justification, 169 ; at 
Marburg, 305. 

Marriage, Luther's, influence of, 
21 ; pastoral, ideal of, no. 

Martyrs, Protestant, 19, 20. 

Mary, the Virgin, invocations of, 
206 ; chapter on, 210 ; symboli- 



cal expressions as to, 210, 211 ; 
definition of immaculate con- 
ception, 212 ; five points of doc- 
trine, 213 ; its power, 213 : sin- 
lessness, 214; conception, 216; 
perpetual virginity, 220 ; drift 
of mariolatry, 223 ; doctrine de- 
pends on naked authority, 225 ; 
history, 226; Gutberlet's apol- 
ogy, 229 ; the doctrine a de- 
velopment, 231 ; a corruption, 

235. 

Mass, defined, 293 ff. ; a sacrifice, 
319; history, 326. 

Masses for the dead, 282, 296. 

Matrimony, fundamental view of, 
common, 340; as a sacrament, 
340 ; Protestant marriages valid, 
342 ; invalid marriages, 342 ; di- 
vorce, 342 ; impediments to mar- 
riage, 346 ; mixed marriages, 

347. 

Matter of the sacraments, 240; 
baptism, 249 ; confirmation, 253 ; 
penance, 256 ; Lord's Supper, 
294 ; order, 339 ; matrimony, 
341 ; extreme unction, 348. 

Merit of good works, 183 ff., 187; 
outgrowths of the doctrine of, 
chapter on, 191 ; supererogatory 
works, 191; monasticism, 194; 
worship of the saints, 200. 

Missions, Protestant and Catholic, 
compared, 17, 18 ; effectiveness 
of married clergy in, no. 

Mohler, iii., definition of Church, 
4; necessarily visible, 6; dam- 
nation of certain popes, 22 ; au- 
thority of Church, 36 ; necessity, 
80; necessity of priesthood, 88; 
papal supremacy, 117; tradition, 
150; interpretation of Scripture, 
151 ; justification, 171 ff. ; faith, 
178 ; good works, 183 ; works of 
supererogation, 192 ; opus opera- 
turn, 238 ; necessity of sacra- 
ments, 242 ; necessity of confes- 
sion, 258 ; purgatory, 276 ; eu- 
charistic sacrifice, 297 ; denial 
of the cup, 331 ; Protestant de- 
mand for the cup, 332. 

Monasticism, origin, 194; good 
done by, 195 ; as an ideal sys- 
tem, bad, 195 ; history of, 195 ; 
the Jesuits, 196 ; Protestant ar- 



362 



Index. 



gument against, 198 ; connection 
of, with the immaculate concep- 
tion, 230. 

Monophysites, sketch of, 66. 

Mormonism wrongly cited against 
Protestantism, 166, 340. 

Mortal sin, defined, 185 ; true na- 
ture of, 244; unconfessed, 257. 

Necessity of the Church, 75 ; modi- 
fications, 81 ; Protestant views, 
82 ; final refutation of, 189. 

Nestorius and the papacy, 131. 

Newman, Cardinal, on the Virgin 
Mary, 226 ; theory of develop- 
ment, 233. 

Nicholas I. and the papacy, 132, 
139. 

Opus opera turn, 237 ff. ; Protestant 

objections, 243. 
Orange, Council of, on free will, 

181. 
Order, sacrament of, 338 ; difficul- 
ties, 339. 
Ordination, 92, 338 ; Protestant 

idea of, 94. 
Origen suggests purgatory, 281 ; 

real presence, 311 ; his " Ster- 

coranism," 315. 
Original sin, Roman doctrine, 171 ; 

Protestant, 172. 

Papacy, chapter on, 113 ; definition 
of papal supremacy, 113 ; devel- 
opment of curial system, 115; 
episcopal theory, 115; points of 
the curial system, 119; Cardinal 
Gibbons' argument upon, 121 ; 
historical view of the develop- 
ment of, 134; relations to State, 
140 ; temporal power, 141 ; tol- 
eration, 145 ; the schools, 146. 

Paschal II. against the denial of 
the cup, 334. 

Pastor, Protestant ideal of, no. 

Paul, Roman primacy founded by 
Gregory upon his sovereignty 
over the Church, 16. 

Penance, chapter on, 255 ; defini- 
tion, 255 ; parts, 256 ; ideal, 257 ; 
proof, 259 ; objections, 260 ; con- 
fession not a condition of for- 
giveness, 260 ; proof texts, 261 ; 
philosophical objections, 263 ; 



historical argument, 265 ; satis- 
factions, 270 ; prayer as penance, 

273- 

Perrone, iv. ; Church, 4 ; Peter, 13, 
15, 16; infallibility, 42; methods 
criticised, 56 f. ; necessity of the 
Church, 80; apologetic conces- 
sions, 82; priesthood, 90, 91, 96; 
episcopate, 98 ; general council 
superfluous, 120; intention, 240; 
"trust" for certainty, 247; ne- 
cessity of confession, 265 ; indul- 
gences, 284; real presence, 299; 
transubstantiation, 314; sacri- 
fice of the Mass, 319, 325; de- 
nial of the cup, 332, 333 ; Mor- 
monism, 340; marriage, 341, 
342 ; divorce, 345. 

Peter, not at Rome, 12 ; not bishop 
there, 15 ; not martyred there, 
16 ; the leader of the apostles, 
but not a primate, 41. 

Photius, separates from Rome, 
25 ; asserted appeal to Rome, 
132. 

Pius IX., on the necessity of the 
Church, 79, 83, 86; toleration, 
145; canonization, 209; immac- 
ulate conception, 212. 

Pontifex Maximus, 54. 

Pope, may be wicked and finally 
lost, 22; infallibility of, 30; may 
hold heresy, 32 ; the title and 
similar titles, how used, 55. 

Power of the keys, given unto 
Peter, 41 ; to the apostles in 
general, 41 ; to the local church, 
42 ; and purgatory, 284. 

Prayer as penance, 273. 

Priesthood, general to all believers, 
91 ; special, 91 ; founded on sac- 
rifice, 91 ; partial refutation, 93 ; 
exaggerations as to, 97; final 
refutation, 325. 

Private judgment, 45 ; misunder- 
stood by Catholics, 46 ; true 
meaning of, 47. 

Ptolmaeus, the heretic, on sacrifice, 

327. 
Purgatory, Mohler on, 183; par- 
tial answer, 186; fuller answer, 

275 ff. ; definition, 275 ; ideal, 

276 ; unnecessary, 277 ; unscrip- 
tiiral, 278; history, 280; corrup- 
tions, 282; a "blessing," 283. 



Index. 



363 



Quarantine, definition, 288. 

Raccolta, the, invocations of Mary 
from, 206. 

Radbertus, Paschasius, on immac- 
ulate conception, 228 ; on tran- 
substantiation, 317. 

Real presence of Christ in the sac- 
rament, 299 ; biblical argument, 
299 ; Protestant advocates, 299 ; 
historical argument, 308 ; theory, 
transubstantiation, 313. 

Reformers, charged with immoral- 
ity, defended, 20. 

Repetitions, vain, of prayers, 274. 

Rome, see of, isolation and in- 
crease of power, 135. 

Sacraments, chapter on, 237 ; gen- 
eral definition, 237; opus opera- 
turn, 2.yj ; ideal interpretations, 
238 ; requisites to validity, 239 ; 
number, 241 ; ideal, 242 ; reply, 
as to number, 242 ; as to opus op- 
eratum, 243 ; as to intention, 246. 

Sacramentum as a translation of 
fxvaT-qpcov, 34^' 

Sacrifice for sins, one, 93 ; the 
Mass not a true, 93 ; so defined, 

295. 

Saints, worship of, definitions, 200; 
Gibbons' arguments for, 201 ; 
Scriptures against, 203 ; distin- 
guished from the worship given 
to God, 204; Christ the only 
mediator, 205 ; practical idolatry, 
205 ; invocations of Mary from 
the Raccolta, 206 ; abuses, 208 ; 
canonization, 208. 

Sardica, council of, grants privi- 
leges to Julius I., 128. 

Satisfactions defined, 257; dis- 
cussed, 270; relation to chas- 
tisements, 272. 

Schism, the great, 25 ; Calixtine, 
25 ; the Protestant, 26. 

Texts of Scripture 
Genesis. page 

1:1 144 

3 : 15 216 

14 : 18 322 

Exodus. 

20 : 5 204 

24 : 8 305 



Schools, the public, 146. 

Scotus, on the immaculate con- 
ception, 229 ; on sacraments, 
238. 

Scriptures, Catholic doctrine of, 
154 ; clearness of, 159. 

Semi-Pelagianism of Roman the- 
ology, 172. 

Sergius and monophysitism, 66; 
letter to Honorius, 67 ; doctrine, 
68. 

"Service" of saints distinguished 
from the "worship" of God, 
204. 

Sinlessness, of Mary, against Scrip- 
ture, 214; of Jesus, 215. 

Sixtus IV., on the immaculate con- 
ception, 210. 

Spurious passages quoted for 
proof, 60. 

Stercoranism, 315. 

Summary of the book, chapter 
containing, 349 ; Roman Church, 
349; its offices, 350; its proofs, 
352 ; its artificialities, 353 ; its 
depotentiation of the gospel, 
354; the Protestant system, 354; 
condensed objection to Roman- 
ism, 356. 

Supererogatory works, 191 ff. ; 
Christ's the only true, 271. 

Supremacy, papal, defined, 113, 

Syllabus of errors, 1864, against 
the salvation of all outside the 
pale of the Church, 80. 

" Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles," two orders of ministers, 
102; public confession, 266; no 
purgatory, 280; no real pres- 
ence, 308 ; eucharist, 326. 

TertuUian on first bishop of Rome, 
16; on authority of the Church, 
52; priesthood, 97; real pres- 
ence, 310; sacrifice, 329. 

Testimony of the Holy Spirit to 
the Scriptures, 157. 

cited or discussed : 

Leviticus. page 

12 : 6 221 

18 : 6-18 346 

Deuteronomy. 

6 : 13 204 

I Samuel. 

15 : 35 221 



3^4 



htdex. 



Texts of Scripture 

PAGE 

278 



278 
278 



1 Samuel. 

31 : 13 • 

2 Samuel. 

I : 12 . 

3: 3 • 
Psalms. 

27 : 2 300 

88 : II, 12 278 

Proverbs. 

23 : 26 270 

Isaiah. 

I : 18 273 

38 : 18 278 

Jeremiah. 

I : 10 144 

Daniel. 

2: 18 . 341 

4:9 341 

Zechariah. 

I : 12, 13 203 

Malachi. 

I : 10 322 

2 Maccabees. 

12 : 40 ff. 278 

15 : 14 203 

Wisdom. 

3:1-3 280 

Matthew. 

I : 25 220 

3:6 266 

4 : 10 204 

5 : 14. 15 7 

5 : 17 215 

5 : 28 307 

5 : 32 343. 345 

6 : 7, 8 274 

7 : 16 290 

II : 23 20s 

11 : 29 ... 215 

12 : 32 279 

12 : 46 214, 220 

12 : 50 215 

13 : II 303 

15:17 315 

16 : 18 38, 40 

16 : 18, 19 . 261 

18 : 15-20 ... 9, 42, 47, 80, 94 

103, 259, 261 

19 : 9 343 

19 : 21 192 

22 : 37 193 

22 : 39 -199 

25:31 99 

26 : 26 . . . ." . . . 164, 304 



cited {continued^, 

Matthew. page 

26 : 27 . . 333 

26 : 28 304 

Mark. 

1:5 266 

3 : 21 ff., 33 ff. 214 

3 : 31 220 

6:3 220 

6:13 348 

9:33-35 41,261 

10 : II, 12 343 

10 : 28 105 

14 : 23 333 

14 : 36 215 

16 : 9-20 160 

16 : 16 80, 252 

Luke. 

1 : 28, 42 218 

2:7 220 

2 : 14 260 

8 : 19 220 

10 : 16 80 

16 : 18 343 

16 : 22 278 

16 : 25, 26 279 

17 : 20, 21 10 

18 : 13, 14 287 

22 : 24-26 41 

. 22 : 32 39 

22 : 38 143 

23 : 43 279 

John. 

2:1-5 215 

2 : 12 220 

3:5 249, 252, 260 

3 : 16 224 

3 : 18 .......... 81 

4 : 14 302 

4 : 34 215 

5 : 24 182 

6 : 26 ff. 300 

6 : 47 280 

6 : 53 303 

7:3.5 220 

7:53-8 : II 160 

8 : 29 215 

8 : 46, 55 215 

10 : 27 ff. 215 

11 : 44 26a 

13 : 14. 15 243 

14 : 6 205 

14: 9 215 

14 : 15-17, 21 245 

15 : 4 245 



Index. 



365 



Texts of Scripture 
John. PAGE 

15 : 10 215 

16 : 13 44 

17 : 3 274 

17 : 20 ff. 215 

18 : II 143 

20:22,23. .41,256,259,263 

21 : 15-17 38 

Acts. 

2 : 38 9, 252, 260 

6 : 1-6 103 

8 : 14-17 253 

10 : 25 204 

13 : 2 321, 322 

14:12-15 ........ 205 

14 : 13 .204 

16 : 31 261 

19 • 5. 6 253 

19 : 18 266 

20 : 17, 28 99 

Romans. 

8:1 272 

8 : 10, 14 10 

8 : 14, 26, 32 44 

8 : 15, 16 182 

13 : I 144 

1 Corinthians. 

2 : 15 144 

3 : 15 279 

5 •• I. 9. 13 9 

5:1-5 285 

7 : 10 ff. 345 

7 : 27 192 

9:5 106 

10 : 16 305 

10 : 18 ff. 322 

11 : 23-29 305 

2 Corinthians. 

1 •• 21 253 

2:6 285 

5 : 18-20 259 

5 : 21 216 

Ephesians. 

1:9 341 

2:1 181 

3:3.9 341 

5 : 27, 30 9 

Colossians. 

1:2 9 

2 : 16 167 

4: 16 14 

I Timothy. 

2: 5 94.224 



cited {continued). 

1 Timothy. page 

3:1 100 

3 : 16 . 341 

4 : 12 106 

2 Timothy. 

1:8 106 

1 : 5-9 ........ 100 

Titus. 

3 : 10, II 81 

Hebrews. 

2 : 10, 18 109 

4 : 15 109, 216, 224 

7 : 12 94 

7 : 25 205, 273 

7 : 26 216 

7 : 27 93 

9 : II, 12 42 

9 : 12 323 

9 : 17-26 321 

9 : 25, 26 93, 323 

9 : 28 323 

10 : 10 323 

10 : II 321 

10: 12 93.323 

10 : 14 323 

10 : 18 323 

13: 4 21,107 

13 : 10, 15, 16 322 

James. 

5 : 14. 15 243, 348 

5 : 16 266 

1 Peter. 

2 : 22 216 

5:13 12 

2 Peter. 

2:1 81 

1 John. 

1:7 273 

2 : 18, 19 81 

5 : 7. 8 160 

2 John. 

vs. 7, 8, 9 81 

Jude. 

vs. 13, 22 81 

Revelation. 

1:6 42 

I : 20 341 

5:8 203 

12 : I ff. ........ 218 

14 : 13 280 

19 : 10 205 

22 : 8, 9 205 



366 



Index. 



Theodoret, appeal to Rome, 131. 

Toleration, 145. 

Tradition defined and discussed, 
149. 

Transubstantiation, 313; difficul- 
ties, 315; chemistry, 316; his- 
tory, 317; unnecessary, 319. 

Treasure of merits and purgatory, 
286. 

Trent, council of, does not treat 
of the Church, 29; priesthood, 
91; celibacy, 105; authority, 
149; justification, 170; freewill, 
181; saint worship, 200; Virgin 
Mary, 211; opus operatum, 237 
ff; intention, 240, 250; penance, 
255 ff; power of the keys, 262; 
merits, 271 ; abuses of purga- 
tory, 282; Lord's Supper, 293 ff; 
denial of the cup, 331 ; con- 
comitance, 334; marriage, 340; 
extreme unction, 348. 

Tridentine profession, necessary 
to salvation, 78 ; as to Mary, 211. 

Unam Sanctam, the bull, trans- 
lated in part and discussed, 76, 
142. 

Unction, extreme, sacrament of, 

347. 
Unity of the Church, 22; power 
of the idea, 22; Rome does not 
possess unity, 23; the chief 
schismatic of history, 24. 



Urban II., presumably against the 
denial of the cup, 334. 

Vatican council, on Peter, 12; on 
infallibility, 30; on exclusiveness 
of the Church, 80; on papal 
supremacy, 113. 

Victor I. and the Easter contro- 
versy, 123. 

Visibility of the Church, 4; de- 
pends on the authority of the 
Church, 8. 

Vulgate, use of, 159; trips Per- 
rone, 303. 

Weninger, on Bible and private 
judgment, 47. 

Westminster Confession, man's 
original state, 171 ; assurance, 
181; guilt of sin, 185; against 
purgatory, 277. 

Works, Catholic doctrine of, 183; 
merit of, 183 ff ; Protestant view 
of, 184; connection with faith, 
185; popular distortions of doc- 
trine of, 187; supererogatory, 
191 ff. 

"Worship" distinguished from 
j " service," 204; to be rendered 
! to the host, 295. 

! 

Zwingle, moral character, 20; at 
I Marburg, 165. 



r 



FEB 



C 1899 



/7CS 



